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Kate
Atkinson is known for her novels - 'Behind the Scenes at the Museum,'
'Human Croquet' and 'Emotionally Weird.' However, she first distinguished
herself as a writer of short fiction, and this collection of 12 stories
is a return to her original craft.
Though each story can stand alone, they are loosely linked together
by common characters - and by 'Buffy the Vampire Slayer.' Just about
every story has a reference to 'Buffy' or a character who watches
'Buffy.' In 'Evil Doppelgangers' the main character is a trendy TV
critic and resident Buffy expert who regularly rolls out learned philosophical
discourses on the Slayer.
Beginning with the understated but post-apocalyptic 'Charlene and
Trudi Go Shopping' - where two women concentrate on a shopping spree
as bombs explode and civil war breaks out - the stories mingle the
mundane with the extraordinary. In 'Temporal Anomaly,' Marianne rings
her mum up for a recipe for lemon meringue pie when she's driving
on the M9, and her car is overtaken by Hades' chariot. As a ghost
she is housebound. As she watches her husband and son cope with their
grief, she is forced to rely on old episodes of 'Star Trek' and 'Buffy'
to gain an understanding of her undead state. In 'Unseen Translation'
a nanny turns into Artemis. Throughout the book Atkinson shows her
flare for the sharp one-liner and spot-on thumbnail characterisation.
Since 'Human Croque't Atkinson has been striking out in increasingly
fantastic and surreal territory, but these elements took a very self-consciously
quirky and farcical turn in her third novel, 'Emotionally Weird.'
Not the End of the World' however shows a consolidation and growth
that transforms what didn't quite work in 'Weird'; the playfulness
that once veered into whimsy has real substance and wit here, and
the irony actually made me laugh. I've always enjoyed the process
of discovery that takes place when you learn that a character in one
story knows someone in the other - and when you find out that several
protagonists went out with the same guy! Linked stories are effective
in communicating both connectiveness and chaos, as David Mitchell's
'Ghostwritten' showed a few years ago. After reading 'Not the End
of the World,'I'm wondering why the possibilities of this format aren't
tried more often.
Though the understatement of the writing is one of the book's strengths,
at times it leant itself to a certain distance. For this reason, the
collection didn't wield the emotional impact of the rich and magnificent
'Human Croquet.' But the poignancy of 'Temporal Anomaly' and 'Sheer
Big Waste of Love' - in which the son of a dying prostitute attends
the funeral of the father who rejected him - provides some balance.
The book itself is beautifully presented, each story preceded by a
woodcut illustration and quotes ranging from Ovid to Emily Dickinson
to - yes, 'Buffy.' The collection is rounded off in a satisfying way
when we return to the intrepid shoppers Charlene and Trudi. Now walled
up by the plague police, they sensuously recall the luxuries of the
past and tell each other "it's not the end of the world."
But these stories hint at some surprises that Atkinson may have in
store for the future, and a world that could just be beginning...
- Copyright © 2003,
Rosanne Rabinowitz.
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