5/30/2023 0 Comments Kate atkinson museumThis was Atkinson’s first novel and won her the Whitbread Book of the Year prize in 1995. It opens with Ruby being fully aware of her own conception: ‘I exist! I am conceived to the chimes of midnight on the clock on the mantelpiece…’ She goes on to describe her parents and their lives together while she is still in her mother’s womb. These observations might seem preternaturally advanced from a narrator not yet old enough to walk and talk, but that is consistent for this witty novel. This is the coronation of Elizabeth II in 1953 as described by one-year-old Ruby Lennox in Kate Atkinson’s Behind the Scenes at the Museum. To prevent this happening people keep weighing her down with cloaks and robes, orbs and spectres, until she’s so heavy that bishops and archbishops have to help propel her around.’ ‘In her big, white dress the Queen looks like a balloon that’s about to float up to the roof of Westminster Abbey and bob about up there amongst the gilded arches and roof bosses.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |