Not the End of the World

Homer comes to Scotland

Helen Falconer is delighted by Kate Atkinson's return to the short story in Not the End of the World

I sing of Artemis, whose shafts are of gold... the pure maiden shooter of stags, who delights in archery . That's a Homeric hymn, quoted by Kate Atkinson to illustrate a literary point. I will sing of Atkinson, whose arrows are as bright: barbed, piercing and precise, fired with analogous delight.

Atkinson won her laurels as a novelist: the famous Behind the Scenes at the Museum (1995 Whitbread Book of the Year), followed by the much-praised Human Croquet and Emotionally Weird. Not the End of the World is her first collection of short stories. Yet when Atkinson started writing at the age of 30, following the birth of her second child, all her literary efforts were short stories - seven years spent filing manuscripts under the bed, before entering the Woman's Own Short Story Competition and shocking herself by scooping first prize. The three novels ensued, but now at last she has returned to the arena of her long apprenticeship.

In this themed collection, Atkinson has chosen to be a playful as well as erudite goddess of the pen. Her tales are largely set in modern Scotland, but she compels the reader to adopt the awed perspective of an ancient Greek. Real life trundles on, but only look twice and you can see the fingerprints of the gods plastered over every "accident" of fate (and we're not talking here about the avuncular Christian type of god but about lustful, arrogant immortals who love to play with mortal lives and spray their seed in human wombs).

In "Tunnel of Fish", Eddie is the despair of his mother, June - a gormless little boy, all gaping mouth and bulging haddock eyes, pallid skin and dreamily slow reactions. The only thing he enjoys is going to Deep Sea World. June has a vague memory, dredged from a Mediterranean holiday: "the disgusting smell of fish and whale fat, the fronds of seaweed entangled in his great beard, his seed like pearls, gushing into the blue water". Eddie just knows the fish in Deep Sea World can talk.

In "Temporal Anomaly", Marianne is driving on the M9 in the pouring rain, planning to bake a lemon meringue pie, when Hades' chariot overtakes her on the inside.

All of these stories show myth and reality bulging into each other, the solid modern wall between them replaced by a ragged curtain of damp Scottish mist. A girl shocks herself by bringing a man back to life. An Olympian father rejects his too-human son, as thunderbolts roar overhead. A stolen cloak confers a dangerous gift: the crushing burden of immortality. Following the considerable success of her novels, what a pleasure it is to find Atkinson luxuriating in her original genre. Let's hope she enjoys her return to it so much that many such inspired collections follow.