And she certainly is living an exciting life, despite her grumblings about it all. The book is FULL of these little gems which come together to create a vivid and rich inner life for Juliet that equally measure up to her external life of espionage during WWII. “Why was it that the females of the species were always the ones left to tidy up, she wondered? I expect Jesus came out of the tomb, Juliet thought, and said to his mother, ‘Can you tidy it up a bit back there?'” (p. She has a biting, sarcastic sense of humour that makes every scene so enjoyable to read. What I love best about her is not the exciting situations she finds herself in, but her inner most thoughts that only us readers are privy to. From then on we switch back and forth between 19, but both decades hold equally enticing and mysterious obstacles for Juliet. We then go even further back to 1940 when Juliet lands at job at the secret service during WWII as she becomes a member of a team dedicated to rooting out German sympathizers-she transcribes the secret conversations they listen in on. The book opens when she’s old and near death, so we know she survives whatever adventure awaits us, and then we skip back to 1950 where she’s living a comfortable if somewhat monotonous life working at the BBC (British Broadcasting Corporation) in London. We see the world through her eyes, at three different points in her life. The shining star of this book is most definitely our protagonist Juliet Armstrong. Despite this hoopla (and I use the word ‘despite’ on purpose, because book buzz tends to be my worst enemy) I really enjoyed reading it, and it only took me a few days to work my way through it. Many said this was Atkinson’s best book to date, and it has been on a bunch of ‘best of 2018’ lists. A bill of reckoning is due, and she finally begins to realize that there is no action without consequence.When Transcription by Kate Atkinson came out in September 2018, there was lots of buzz around it. A different war is being fought now, on a different battleground, but Juliet finds herself once more under threat.

Ten years later, now a producer at the BBC, Juliet is unexpectedly confronted by figures from her past. But after the war has ended, she presumes the events of those years have been relegated to the past for ever. Sent to an obsolete department of MI5 tasked with monitoring the comings and goings of British Fascist sympathizers, she discovers the work to be by turns both tedious and terrifying. In 1940, eighteen-year-old Juliet Armstrong is reluctantly recruited into the world of espionage. Religion - Study, history & religious textsĪntiquity, Specialist & Rare Books (Other Quality)Īuthor of ‘Life After Life’ and ‘A God in Ruins’

Transcription kate