Human Croquet by Kate Atkinson
Oct. 5th, 2009 08:26 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
quippeThe Blurb On The Back:
Once it had been the great forest of Lythe – a vast and impenetrable thicket of green with a mystery in the very heart of the trees. And here, in the beginning, lived the Fairfaxes, grandly, at Fairfax Manor, visited once by the great Gloriana herself.
But over the centuries the forest had been destroyed, replaced by Streets of Trees. The Fairfaxes had dwindled too; now they lived in ‘Arden’ at the end of Hawthorne Close and were hardly a family at all.
There was Vinny (the Aunt from Hell) – with her cats and her crab-apple face. And Gordon, who had forgotten them for seven years and, when he remembered, came back with fat Debbie, who shared her one brain cell with a poodle. And then there were Charles and Isobel, the children. Charles, the acne-scarred Lost Boy, passed his life awaiting visits from aliens and the return of his mother. But it is Isobel to whom the story belongs – Isobel, born on the Streets of Trees, who drops into pockets of time and out again. Isobel is sixteen and she too is waiting for the return of her mother – the thin, dangerous Eliza with her scent of nicotine, Arpege and sex, whose disappearance is part of the mystery that still remains at the heart of the forest.
Isobel lives with her geeky brother, Charles, father Gordon, step-mother Debbie and awful aunt Vinny in a large house in a small town. All are overshadowed by the disappearance of Isobel's mother, the exotic and dangerous Eliza, who oozed sex appeal wherever she went. When Isobel begins to experience time-shifts that see her jump to different periods in her family history, she begins to unravel the mystery of her mother's disappearance and in the process, discovers who she is herself.
There's much to admire in this novel, which begins with the very creation of the world and finishes with its destruction. Atkinson skillfully weaves in the family history of the Fairfax history through its legends and ups and downs before settling on Isobel and her strange kin. Set mainly in the 1960s there is much attention paid to period detail, notably within the language and references of the time, although Isobel somehow sounds a little too old and middle-aged to be truly convincing as a heroine.
Easily the strongest character is Eliza, with her bitchy comments and sensuous appeal, whose disappearance has cast a pall over the whole family and particularly her husband Gordan, who disappears to New Zealand to escape it, leaving his children in the care of his sister and mother. Vinny herself is an amusing and bitchy grotesque, blind as to her own limitations and bitter about the poor hand that life has dealt her. The novel is at its most fun when she is on the page.
Atkinson keeps a firm grip on her time-shifts and while some of the scenes are a little disorientating, she pulls them together at the end, which ironically was the part of the book that I had the biggest problem with. Without spoiling it, the final device that Atkinson uses to pull her strands together feels very cheap (akin to Bobby Ewing emerging from the shower) and spoilt the effect of the previous pages. Up until that point I'd found the book to be a real page turner and it's a shame that the ending felt like rather a cheat. Also disappointing was the recurring theme of sex abuse and incest, which became so repetitive towards the end that it almost felt as though Atkinson had run out of ideas.
The Verdict:
Worth a look but it's let down by a poor ending that made me feel as though I'd wasted my time with the preceding pages.
Once it had been the great forest of Lythe – a vast and impenetrable thicket of green with a mystery in the very heart of the trees. And here, in the beginning, lived the Fairfaxes, grandly, at Fairfax Manor, visited once by the great Gloriana herself.
But over the centuries the forest had been destroyed, replaced by Streets of Trees. The Fairfaxes had dwindled too; now they lived in ‘Arden’ at the end of Hawthorne Close and were hardly a family at all.
There was Vinny (the Aunt from Hell) – with her cats and her crab-apple face. And Gordon, who had forgotten them for seven years and, when he remembered, came back with fat Debbie, who shared her one brain cell with a poodle. And then there were Charles and Isobel, the children. Charles, the acne-scarred Lost Boy, passed his life awaiting visits from aliens and the return of his mother. But it is Isobel to whom the story belongs – Isobel, born on the Streets of Trees, who drops into pockets of time and out again. Isobel is sixteen and she too is waiting for the return of her mother – the thin, dangerous Eliza with her scent of nicotine, Arpege and sex, whose disappearance is part of the mystery that still remains at the heart of the forest.
Isobel lives with her geeky brother, Charles, father Gordon, step-mother Debbie and awful aunt Vinny in a large house in a small town. All are overshadowed by the disappearance of Isobel's mother, the exotic and dangerous Eliza, who oozed sex appeal wherever she went. When Isobel begins to experience time-shifts that see her jump to different periods in her family history, she begins to unravel the mystery of her mother's disappearance and in the process, discovers who she is herself.
There's much to admire in this novel, which begins with the very creation of the world and finishes with its destruction. Atkinson skillfully weaves in the family history of the Fairfax history through its legends and ups and downs before settling on Isobel and her strange kin. Set mainly in the 1960s there is much attention paid to period detail, notably within the language and references of the time, although Isobel somehow sounds a little too old and middle-aged to be truly convincing as a heroine.
Easily the strongest character is Eliza, with her bitchy comments and sensuous appeal, whose disappearance has cast a pall over the whole family and particularly her husband Gordan, who disappears to New Zealand to escape it, leaving his children in the care of his sister and mother. Vinny herself is an amusing and bitchy grotesque, blind as to her own limitations and bitter about the poor hand that life has dealt her. The novel is at its most fun when she is on the page.
Atkinson keeps a firm grip on her time-shifts and while some of the scenes are a little disorientating, she pulls them together at the end, which ironically was the part of the book that I had the biggest problem with. Without spoiling it, the final device that Atkinson uses to pull her strands together feels very cheap (akin to Bobby Ewing emerging from the shower) and spoilt the effect of the previous pages. Up until that point I'd found the book to be a real page turner and it's a shame that the ending felt like rather a cheat. Also disappointing was the recurring theme of sex abuse and incest, which became so repetitive towards the end that it almost felt as though Atkinson had run out of ideas.
The Verdict:
Worth a look but it's let down by a poor ending that made me feel as though I'd wasted my time with the preceding pages.
