This book just couldn't hold my attention. Atkinson has a meandering style and I wasn't patient enough to wait and see where she was going.
I would count Kate Atkinson as one of my favorite authors. Her plots, her characters. I think she's a masterful author! And then, there's this book. Yecch. Couldn't get into it. I think that this book is supposed to be some clever literary piece. Perhaps that's the case, and I'm just not smart enough to get it. So, I hope others who are more intellectual than I will enjoy it.
Set in Dundee, Scotland, in the early 70s, this is a complex multi-layered story about students in a college writing class and one student's quest to learn about her birth family. Atkinson writes well and the story is interwoven, yet compelling.
"Sophisticated commentary on the art of storytelling, and a stinging critique of the foibles of modern literary studies." Washington Post Book World.
A playful, and yet complex novel, as a mother who is retreating from the world on a small island off the coast of Scotland, and her visiting college-age daughter, tell one another stories of their lives.
