The Bachelors, Magpie Lane and Behind the Scenes at the Museum

 

Patrick Seton is the most awful character since Tom Ripley. Everything he says is a manipulative lie. Especially to poor pregnant Alice. But here are other bachelors, Ronald Bridges and Mathew Finch who have tumbled his little game as a fake medium and possibly not even married when he tells Alice he is getting a divorce. A large cast of other characters including more bachelors. I cannot remember if anyone is actually married? Including Marlene Cooper whose husband "had been buried three months when, convinced of his dynamic survival (at a spiritualist meeting), she had him dug up and cremated". This is all pure Muriel Spark, humour with an edge. I have not read a book recently with so much dialogue, pages and pages. Late on, ten pages of a conversation between two strangers who actually knew of each other, is quite exceptional. Fortunately, I still have a few of this author's books still to read.

For me, the best thing about this book, and the only reason I bought it, was the location. Oxford plays a large part and almost every interesting location appears at some point. We are in standard thriller territory, novels of this type are not my normal choices. Dee is our possibly unreliable narrator, taken on as nanny to young Felicity at, yes, the new master's lodge. But we know early on that Felicity has disappeared. So backwards and forwards we go as Dee explains to the police, and more so to us, what it was like before the possible abduction.

Halfway through we meet Linklater, but his involvement is more as a tour guide, hence more about the history of Oxford. We gradually learn a lot about the background of Dee herself and why the police might be interested in her. As the tension ramps up towards the end, we try to guess what has happened to Felicity. Not the best constructed finale, but isn't that just typical.

As an experiment, I thought that I would read again a book from before I started on goodreads. So naturally I veered towards a Kate Atkinson novel. This is what I wrote on my blog on 7th August 2010.

Kate Atkinson's first novel not only won the Whitbread prize of 1995 for the best first novel, but was also their book of the year in all categories. Behind the Scenes at the Museum is actually quite exceptional and will probably be the best book I will read this year. Our heroine, Ruby, is born in 1952, and she tells the story of her family, going back to her great grandmother. The first chapter is hilarious as Ruby starts by introducing her family from when she is in the womb. There are many laugh out loud moments, but others that bring a tear to the eye. I had already read one novel by the author, a very good crime drama When Will There Be Good News, and am looking forward to her Case Histories among others.

Reading again, I was less sure about the alternating stories of Ruby and her ancestors, particularly that of her grandmother Nell. Somehow the latter seemed to disrupt the narrative of the main character. I had forgotten how her story follows her through her childhood and teenage years with only a few pages at the end about her adult life. But with Ruby born in 1952, there was much that resonated from my own childhood. For example in 1959 when Ruby is seven and I'm fourteen, there is never any heat in the bedrooms. And we both watched the coronation in 1953 on a tiny black and white TV.

When you are one of three or four children, there are very few times you have your mother to yourself. Ruby's was with her buying her school uniform. "Some of the most pleasant times we spent together". Mine was with Mum, taking the bus and then a trolley bus for what we thought was an interview for my new Grammar School. (It was only an introduction). But the best parts are those where the humour stands out. Such as when Ruby's mother goes missing and her father has to cope with four little girls.

The author's home city of York plays a large part in the novel. In the last few pages Ruby has had enough. "It seems like a fake city, a progression of flats and sets and white cardboard battlements and medieval half-timbered house kits that have been cut and glued together. The streets are full of strangers - up-market buskers , school parties and coach parties and endless varieties of foreigners." But this is only a prelude to a wonderful emotional ending.