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Critics' Opinion:
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First Published:
Sep 2022, 416 pages
Paperback:
May 2, 2023, 416 pages
Book Reviewed by:
Norah Piehl
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The #1 national bestselling, award-winning author of Life after Life transports us to a restless London in the wake of the Great War--a city fizzing with money, glamour, and corruption--in this spellbinding tale of seduction and betrayal
1926, and in a country still recovering from the Great War, London has become the focus for a delirious new nightlife. In the clubs of Soho, peers of the realm rub shoulders with starlets, foreign dignitaries with gangsters, and girls sell dances for a shilling a time.
The notorious queen of this glittering world is Nellie Coker, ruthless but also ambitious to advance her six children, including the enigmatic eldest, Niven, whose character has been forged in the crucible of the Somme. But success breeds enemies, and Nellie's empire faces threats from without and within. For beneath the dazzle of Soho's gaiety, there is a dark underbelly, a world in which it is all too easy to become lost.
With her unique Dickensian flair, Kate Atkinson gives us a window in a vanished world. Slyly funny, brilliantly observant, and ingeniously plotted, Shrines of Gaiety showcases the myriad talents that have made Atkinson one of the most lauded writers of our time.
1926
Holloway
"Is it a hanging?" an eager newspaper delivery boy asked no one in particular. He was short, just thirteen years old, and was jumping up and down in an effort to obtain a better view of whatever it was that had created the vaudeville atmosphere. It wasn't much past dawn and there was still hardly any light in the sky, but that had not failed to deter a party crowd of motley provenance from gathering outside the gates of Holloway prison. Half of the throng were up early, the other half seemed not to have been to bed yet.
Many of the congregation were in evening dress—the men in dinner jackets or white tie and tails, the women shivering in flimsy backless silk beneath their furs. The boy could smell the tired miasma of alcohol, perfume and tobacco that drifted around them. Toffs, he thought. He was surprised that they were happily rubbing shoulders with lamplighters and milkmen and early shift-workers, not to mention the usual riffraff and rubberneckers who were always...
Much as she did skillfully and delightfully in her Jackson Brodie mysteries, Atkinson segues from character to character and from scene to scene, cleverly utilizing overlapping chronologies and well-placed coincidences in techniques reminiscent of the best Victorian novels. But she also folds in issues of sexuality, women's rights, reproductive health, drug use, sexual harassment and other topics that ring true to the time but wouldn't have been written about so openly as the author is free to do here. Real-life historical figures make cameos, but not in a distracting or manipulative way; instead, Atkinson's focus is on the characters she's created and the many layers of loyalty and betrayal built up between them, making it clear that she—like the master storyteller she is—is entirely in control of the boisterous history she shares with her lucky readers...continued
Full Review
(604 words).
(Reviewed by Norah Piehl).
In an Author's Note in her novel Shrines of Gaiety, Kate Atkinson reveals that the real-life inspiration for her character Nellie Coker was Kate Meyrick, the impresario known as the "Queen of Nightclubs." Much like Atkinson's character, "Ma" Meyrick built an empire of sorts during the Jazz Age, owning and operating a string of clubs in London (and, for a brief time, in Paris), often with the assistance of her adult children.
Meyrick, who repeatedly separated from and reunited with her husband and the father of her eight children, was inspired to open her first club in 1919, when she found herself caring for her eldest daughter, who had caught influenza at college, without much support. Opening a nightclub enabled Meyrick to have her ...
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