Light holiday read. Very entertaining in some parts, not so interesting in other sections.

4.5

The story of Isobel Fairfax, a girl growing up in Lythe, a typical 1960s British suburb. But Lythe was once the heart of an Elizabethan feudal estate and home to a young English tutor named William Shakespeare, and as Isobel investigates the strange history of her family, her neighbors, and her village, she occasionally gets caught in Shakespearean time warps. Meanwhile, she gets closer to the shocking truths about her missing mother, her war-hero father, and the hidden lives of her close friends and classmates.

Isobel is an engaging character, surrounded by unforgettable relations and friends from acerbic Aunt Vinny to her short brother Charles to her missing mother and vague father. The book moves in and out of fantasy and time warps, but because the author is so skilled at creating worlds within worlds, I was happy to follow wherever she led. I also loved LIFE AFTER LIFE and will now look for another Atkinson novel to read...and soon.

where Atkinson the tricksy magical realist and Atkinson the crime novelist intersect.
probably the most difficult to "get into" with its complex nonlinear narrative but one of my favourites.
This has everything you need from an Atkinson novel: murder, incest (lots of incest), unhappy families, bad men (men ARE bastards aren't they? ), the North, cracks in time, time warp, wormholes, time loops, death, violence, highbrow literary references, lowbrow literary references, dark pitch humour. ..mystery, child abuse, domestic abuse. ..everything

Read: Human Croquet by Kate Atkinson
Lots of fun, I chuckled my way through. Somewhat confused by the time travel, alternative paths and possible hallucinations. Isobel is 16 in the 60s. Her mum and dad disappear mysteriously. All the characters are strange.

I picked this because it was in a list of recommended books with time travel. The writing is excellent, but I thought overall the plot was disjointed. Maybe there were too many moving parts? The resolution was disappointing.

kinda wacky...lots of traveling back and forth through time and stories, but a great read. she's hilarious and wonderful...

I absolutely love Kate Atkinson, but this book didn't work for me. I saw echoes of the themes later presented in Life After Life, where I think they were more meaningful and more successful. That being said, the writing was hauntingly beautiful and the characters were sympathetic, as always.

Very, very strange book. I like strange. The "human croquet" game is explained in an epilogue, and I would have to reread the book with that in mind to make sense of the plot(s) and characters. Not sure I want to work that hard. This is an earlier book than Atkinson's Jackson Brodie mysteries and quite different. Hoping for another Jackson soon!