Kate Atkinson - Behind The Scenes At The Museum

Kate Atkinson´s read for the first time in the form of Behind The Scenes At The Museum. It’s a magical realist style, quite superbly virtuosic and utterly vivid in everything it tries to do. It’s the story of Ruby, a 1950s girl whom we meet, like Tristram Shandy, before she is born. She seems to have perfect recall for a memory, which later on becomes something of a contradiction, because the plot hinges on a particular empty area of her past, something that she has apparently blocked out completely. Ruby's ability to recall detail of events where she was not even present seems astounding, and makes her inability to remember anything about a twin whom she is, after all, accused of killing is all the more incredible. It was her sister’s fault anyway. Overall the book is beautiful, but just once in a while I wanted it to break free of the confines of the family, just for a while. The garden gate seemed to be open, but we could never quite et through it. This limitation did not detract from what was in itself a beautifully constructed and brilliantly written book,