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SHRINES OF GAIETY by Kate Atkinson Kirkus Star

SHRINES OF GAIETY

by Kate Atkinson

Pub Date: Sept. 27th, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-385-54797-0
Publisher: Doubleday

The author of Big Sky (2019) and Transcription (2018) takes readers on a tour of London’s post–World War I demimonde.

It’s 1926. Nellie Coker presides over an empire of five nightclubs catering to a diverse clientele and a brood of six children of various talents and aptitudes. Just released from prison, she finds herself beset on all sides. Would-be usurpers have infiltrated her inner circle. DCI John Frobisher is determined to bring her to justice. And Gwendolen Kelling—currently on leave from her job as a librarian in York, lately a nurse serving in the Great War—has just emerged as something of a wild card. While the story unfolds over a period of weeks and is almost entirely contained to London, it sprawls across social classes and gives voice to a glorious miscellany of characters. The tone is set by Nellie, a woman who had the will and the smarts to create herself, and two veterans of the trenches—Gwendolen and Nellie’s son Niven, who survived deployment to the Somme. These three are hard to shock and difficult to take unawares, and they have all endured experiences that make them want to live. Like all of Atkinson’s novels, her latest defies easy categorization. It’s historical fiction, but there’s a sense of knowingness that feels contemporary, and if this irony may feel anachronistic, it also feels spiritually correct. Intertwined mysteries drive the plot, but this is not a mystery in any conventional sense. The adjective Dickensian feels too clichéd to be meaningful, but Atkinson does excel at creating a big, bustling universe fully inhabited by vivid characters. And, like Dickens, Atkinson is obviously fond of her characters—even the ones who do horrible things. Sometimes this means that she lets us know the fate of a character with a walk-on part. Sometimes her care manifests in giving a character the sort of perfect ending that seldom exists outside of Greek tragedy or screwball comedy. And, in one exquisite moment, the author shows her love by releasing characters from the confines of the narrative altogether—a choice she seems to offer as a gift to both her creations and her readers.

Already one of the best writers working, Atkinson just gets better and better.