Shrines of Gaiety

Starred review from July 18, 2022
The title of Atkinson’s glittering foray into London’s post-WWI Soho (after Big Sky) comes from the obituary of real-life club maven Kate Meyrick, the inspiration for protagonist Nellie Coker. It’s cause for celebration in 1926 when a “party crowd of motley provenance” gathers to greet Coker on her release from Holloway women’s prison after her arrest in a raid on her illegal club. They include most of her six children; moral crusader Det. Chief Insp. John Frobisher of Bow Street Station; and outsider Gwendolyn Kelling, a York librarian and former war nurse seeking two female friends who, like many a girl in the vile city, have gone missing or been dumped in the Thames—and some of them worked for Nellie. Overlapping plots reveal nefarious schemes to end Nellie’s firm grip on her five dens of iniquity, which are frequented by royalty and celebrities. Nellie will not go down easily amid internecine family battles, corrupt police forces, and ghosts from the past out for bloody revenge. The long shadow of the Great War gives way to the fuggy Jazz Age atmosphere of dance halls, drug dens, Belgravia spielers, abortionists, and roving pickpockets who take to the “stage of duplicity and disguise,” as Gwendolyn views the demimonde while working undercover for Frobisher. Atkinson’s incisive prose and byzantine narrative elegantly excavate the deceit, depravity, and destruction of Nellie’s world. She also turns this rich historical into a sophisticated cat-and-mouse tale as the various actors try to move in on Nellie’s turf. Atkinson is writing at the top of her game. Agent: Kim Witherspoon, InkWell Management.

July 15, 2022
The author of Big Sky (2019) and Transcription (2018) takes readers on a tour of London's post-World War I demimonde. It's 1926. Nellie Coker presides over an empire of five nightclubs catering to a diverse clientele and a brood of six children of various talents and aptitudes. Just released from prison, she finds herself beset on all sides. Would-be usurpers have infiltrated her inner circle. DCI John Frobisher is determined to bring her to justice. And Gwendolen Kelling--currently on leave from her job as a librarian in York, lately a nurse serving in the Great War--has just emerged as something of a wild card. While the story unfolds over a period of weeks and is almost entirely contained to London, it sprawls across social classes and gives voice to a glorious miscellany of characters. The tone is set by Nellie, a woman who had the will and the smarts to create herself, and two veterans of the trenches--Gwendolen and Nellie's son Niven, who survived deployment to the Somme. These three are hard to shock and difficult to take unawares, and they have all endured experiences that make them want to live. Like all of Atkinson's novels, her latest defies easy categorization. It's historical fiction, but there's a sense of knowingness that feels contemporary, and if this irony may feel anachronistic, it also feels spiritually correct. Intertwined mysteries drive the plot, but this is not a mystery in any conventional sense. The adjective Dickensian feels too clich�d to be meaningful, but Atkinson does excel at creating a big, bustling universe fully inhabited by vivid characters. And, like Dickens, Atkinson is obviously fond of her characters--even the ones who do horrible things. Sometimes this means that she lets us know the fate of a character with a walk-on part. Sometimes her care manifests in giving a character the sort of perfect ending that seldom exists outside of Greek tragedy or screwball comedy. And, in one exquisite moment, the author shows her love by releasing characters from the confines of the narrative altogether--a choice she seems to offer as a gift to both her creations and her readers. Already one of the best writers working, Atkinson just gets better and better.

COPYRIGHT(2022) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

August 1, 2022
After several breathtaking novels set during WWII, Atkinson turns her historical clock back about 20 years in this riveting re-creation of life in 1920s London, when ""Bright Young People"" cavorted in Soho night spots and ""the time of dreariness was over."" Nellie Corker, the self-made queen of the city's club scene, has just returned from prison to find her empire threatened from within and without. A new police inspector, John Frobisher, appears impervious to bribes; a rival entrepreneur may be colluding with one of Nellie's six children; and Nellie herself is feeling less formidable after being behind bars. Based on real-life nightclub owner Kate Meyrick, Nellie is a thoroughly magnetic protagonist, easily capable of carrying a novel on her shoulders, but Atkinson has never shied away from big casts or intertwining plots, and she outdoes herself here. In addition to Nellie, her family, and their travails, the narrative weaves back and forth among the stories of the melancholy Frobisher; Gwendolyn Kelling, a librarian and former battlefront nurse; and two teens, vanished into Soho's demimonde, whom Gwendolyn has come to London to find. Atkinson's palpable fondness for her characters helps her to imbue even the most minor of them with texture and depth, and she brings the same attention to detail to her portrait of the highs and lows of Jazz Age London. Another triumph from one of our finest novelists.HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: Atkinson's 12 books, both mysteries and historical fiction, have built a steadily increasing audience of discerning readers.

COPYRIGHT(2022) Booklist, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.