Atkinson, Kate 1951-

PERSONAL: Born 1951, in York, England; married first husband (divorced); married second husband (a teacher; divorced); children: two daughters. Education: University of Dundee, M.A., 1974, postgraduate study in American contemporary fiction.

ADDRESSES: Home—Edinburgh, Scotland. Agent—c/o Author Mail, Doubleday UK, c/o Transworld Publishers, 61-63 Uxbridge Rd., London W5 5SA, England.

CAREER: Writer. University of Dundee, Dundee, Scotland, English department tutor, c. 1980s and 1990s; also worked as a chambermaid.

AWARDS, HONORS: Winner of Woman's Own short story competition, 1986; Ian St. James Award, 1993, for short story "Karmic Mothers"; Whitbread Book of the Year Award, 1995, for Behind the Scenes at the Museum; Yorkshire Post Book Award for best first work, 1996, for Behind the Scenes at the Museum; E.M. Forster Award, American Academy of Arts and Letters, 1997; shortlisted for Whitbread Novel Award, 2004, for Case Histories.

WRITINGS:

NOVELS

Behind the Scenes at the Museum, St. Martin's Press (New York, NY), 1996.

Human Croquet, Picador (New York, NY), 1997.

Emotionally Weird, Picador (New York, NY), 2000.

Case Histories, Little, Brown (New York, NY), 2004.

One Good Turn, Little, Brown (New York, NY), 2006.

Jolly Murder Mystery, Doubleday (New York, NY), 2006.

OTHER

Nice (play), produced in Edinburgh, Scotland, at Traverse Theatre, 1996.

Abandonment (play; adapted from the British version by director Kit Thacker, produced in Edinburgh, Scotland, at Traverse Theater, 2000; produced in New York at Sanford Meisner Theater, 2005), Nick Hearn Books (London, England), 2000.

Not the End of the World (stories), Little, Brown (Boston, MA), 2002.

Also author of short stories.

ADAPTATIONS: "Karmic Mothers" was adapted for BBC2 television as part of the series Tartan Shorts.

SIDELIGHTS: Kate Atkinson's first novel, Behind the Scenes at the Museum, recounts four generations of misery in a family living in Yorkshire, England, as described by Ruby Lennox, a skeptical adolescent whose story is humorously interrupted by footnotes relating incidents from the lives of her parents and grandparents. Yorkshire is a location with, according to New York Times Book Review critic Ben Macintyre, "an established and self-nurtured reputation as a place of heroic complaint." It is thus fitting that Atkinson's "jubilant, irreverent narrator … at once celebrates and mercilessly skewers her middle-class English family," according to Megan Harlan in Salon. Ruby's father, for example, is depicted as a coarse philanderer and her mother as unfeeling and grumpy. Together they own a pet shop in which they behave unlike themselves; "the parents' lives are entirely a performance, a play scripted by themselves, which might be called 'Everything is nice and normal.' But it is not," wrote Hilary Mantel in the London Review of Books.

Behind the Scenes at the Museum flashes forward and backward in time, using the chapter footnotes. These leap off in odd directions apart from the primary narrative, often in pursuit of the history of household objects—missing buttons and odd pieces of china—or to recount the tale of how Ruby's great-grandmother abandoned her poverty-stricken brood, retreating with a French photographer, for example. "Atkinson cares for structure," observed Mantel, "and here is a delicate but robust skeleton on which hangs the muscle of narrative force and the tissue of loss and sadness and indecent merriment."

Atkinson garnered praise for the strength of her humor, as well as for her insights into family relationships. "Behind the Scenes at the Museum is a multigenerational tale of a spectacularly dysfunctional Yorkshire family and one of the funniest works of fiction to come out of Britain in years," enthused Macintyre. While acknowledging the work's merits, others expressed surprise that a novel of such ordinary concerns, and a first novel at that, would be the recipient of such high honors. Tim Adams remarked in the Observer that "Atkinson has a genuine feel for the comedy of domestic ritual" and that Behind the Scenes at the Museum is "an entertaining … debut."

Emotionally Weird tells the story of Effie and her mother Nora, who live on an isolated island off the coast of Scotland. To pass the time, the two women tell each other the secrets of their lives, although not always truthfully. Effie eventually learns the identity of her father, a secret she has never before been able to learn. The novel's narrative is interrupted by Effie's frequent recountings of the activities of her university classmates, much to the chagrin of her mother. While Greg Villepique in Salon.com found that the novel displays "a mischievous imagination and suggests a real talent for composing on a large canvas," he concluded that "it feels, in the end, both packed and empty, overthought and underwrought." Carolyn Kubisz in Booklist claimed that "Atkinson's smart, funny novel explores the power of storytelling and blurs the line between fact and fiction to the point where readers are never quite sure what is real and what is only a really good story." "Atkinson," wrote Beth E. Andersen in the Library Journal, "is a clever writer, suffusing her work with fresh humor, sharp word play, and the occasional touch of magic realism."

Not the End of the World is a collection of twelve stories that blend realism and fantastical elements. The plots range over a wide variety of subjects, from a woman who adopts a stray cat to the story of a television critic and his evil twin. In another tale, the young child of wealthy but neglectful parents is spirited away by a modern-day Mary Poppins figure. Yet another story is related through the eyes of Addison Fox, whose mother was a prostitute and who was forcefully rejected by his well-to-do father. Addison has a strange consolation when he meets his father's legitimate children and realizes that they are in even worse circumstances than he is. Atkinson does a "masterful job" portraying troubled family dynamics, according to Amy Waldman in People. The "wild inventiveness" of these stories makes them "exceptionally entertaining," stated Joanne Wilkinson in Booklist. Atkinson's short stories are "not as intense or as unified" as her novels, in the opinion of a Publishers Weekly reviewer, who nevertheless recommended Not the End of the World as "a sharp and wholly original collection."

Atkinson's novel Case Histories serves as another showcase for her ability to portray atypical families and flawed individuals. "Disparate family histories collide and long-buried secrets resurface in this ingeniously crafted modern-day suspense narrative that combines elements of a traditional detective novel with riveting psychological character studies," reported Joni Rendon in her BookPage review of Case Histories. The principals in the story are bound together by a strange set of coincidences, linked to Jackson Brodie, a private investigator in Cambridge. Jeff Turrentine, reviewing the book for the Washington Post, believed that if judged on plot alone, the book would be considered a failure; however, "if you read the novel instead as a multifaceted character study grafted onto the detective-thriller format, it's a rousing triumph, thanks in whole to Atkinson's boundless sympathy for her funny, pathetic, three-dimensional and fully human creations."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Booklist, April 1, 1997, review of Behind the Scenes at the Museum, p. 1285; April 15, 2000, Carolyn Kubisz, review of Emotionally Weird, p. 1522; November 15, 2003, Joanne Wilkinson, review of Not the End of the World, p. 579; August, 2004, Joanne Wilkinson, review of Case Histories, p. 1870; January 1, 2005, review of Case Histories, p. 768.

Boston Globe, January 23, 2005, Roberta Silman, review of Case Histories.

Commonweal, December 6, 1996, review of Behind the Scenes at the Museum, p. 21; May 9, 1997, review of Human Croquet, p. 25.

Entertainment Weekly, December 3, 2004, Jennifer Reese, review of Case Histories, p. 128.

Europe Intelligence Wire, June 7, 2005, interview with Kate Atkinson.

Guardian, October 2, 2004, Carrie O'Grady, review of Case Histories.

Harper's Bazaar, June, 2000, Adriana Leshko, review of Emotionally Weird, p. 96.

Kirkus Reviews, February 15, 1997, review of Human Croquet, p. 237; March 15, 2000, review of Emotionally Weird, p. 316; September 15, 2003, review of Not the End of the World, p. 1137; August 15, 2004, review of Case Histories, p. 755.

Kliatt, September, 1997, review of Behind the Scenes at the Museum, p. 36; September, 2005, Jodi L. Israel, review of Case Histories, p. 46.

Library Journal, October 1, 1996, review of Behind the Scenes at the Museum, p. 46; March 1, 1997, p. 100; April 1, 2000, Beth E. Andersen, review of Emotionally Weird, p. 128; September 1, 2003, Barbara Love, review of Not the End of the World, p. 212.

London Review of Books, April 4, 1996, Hilary Mantel, review of Behind the Scenes at the Museum, pp. 23-24; September 15, 2004, Jenn B. Stidham, review of Case Histories, p. 47.

M2 Best Books, December 1, 2005, "Kate Atkinson Wins Scotland's Top Literary Award."

New Statesman, March 21, 1997, review of Human Croquet, p. 53; March 13, 2000, Amanda Craig, review of Emotionally Weird, p. 57.

New York Times, June 25, 2000, Stephanie Zacharek, review of Emotionally Weird; December 5, 2004, Jacqueline Carey, review of Case Histories.

New York Times Book Review, March 31, 1996, Ben Macintyre, review of Behind the Scenes at the Museum, pp. 13-14; July 6, 1997, review of Human Croquet, p. 7.

Observer, January 28, 1996, Tim Adams, review of Behind the Scenes at the Museum, p. 16; March 9, 1997, review of Human Croquet, p. 17.

People, January 12, 2004, Amy Waldman, review of Not the End of the World, p. 48; December 13, 2004, Vick Boughton, review of Case Histories, p. 56.

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, January 16, 2005, Sharon Dilworth, review of Case Histories.

Publishers Weekly, October 30, 1995, p. 46; February 10, 1997, review of Human Croquet, pp. 63-64; April 24, 2000, review of Emotionally Weird, p. 57; November 10, 2003, review of Not the End of the World, p. 43; October 25, 2004, review of Case Histories, and interview with Kate Atkinson, p. 27.

San Francisco Chronicle, November 21, 2004, Timothy Peters, review of Case Histories, p. E1.

Spectator, November 18, 1995, review of Behind the Scenes at the Museum, p. 49; March 8, 1997, review of Human Croquet, p. 31; September 4, 2004, Digby Durrant, review of Case Histories, p. 35.

Sunday Herald (Scotland), September 12, 2004, Anita Sethi, review of Case Histories.

Times Educational Supplement, July 19, 1996, review of Behind the Scenes at the Museum, p. R6; April 18, 1997, review of Human Croquet, p. 7.

Times Literary Supplement, April 21, 1995, review of Behind the Scenes at the Museum, p. 21; March 7, 1997, review of Human Croquet, p. 21.

Tribune Books (Chicago, IL), March 9, 1997, review of Behind the Scenes at the Museum, p. 8.

Village Voice, June 24, 1997, review of Human Croquet, p. 54.

Washington Post Book World, December 19, 2004, Jeff Turrentine, review of Case Histories, p. 3.

ONLINE

Agony Column, http://trashotron.com/agony/ (May 10, 2005), Nazalee Raja, review of Case Histories.

AllReaders.com, http://www.allreaders.com/ (February 17, 2006), reviews of Behind the Scenes at the Museum, and Case Histories.

Bookpage, http://www.bookpage.com/ (February 17, 2006), Joni Rendon, review of Case Histories.

Bookslut, http://www.bookslut.com/ (February, 2004),Sara Pfannkuche, review of Not the End of the World.

Salon.com, http://www.salonmagazine.com/ (June 29, 2000), Megan Harlan, review of Behind the Scenes at the Museum; Greg Villepique, review of Emotionally Weird.

Scotsman.com, http://news.scotsman.com/ (February17, 2006), David Robinson, review of Case Histories.

Seattle Times Online, http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/ (February 17, 2006), Misha Berson, review of Case Histories.

Telegraph Online, http://www.telegraph.co.uk/ (August 29, 2004), Katie Owen, review of Case Histories.

Wonderful Unofficial Kate Atkinson Web site, http://www.geocities.com/kateatkinson14/ (February 17,2006).