posted on 12 Jul 2023

Behind the Scenes at the Museum by Kate Atkinson

Kate Atkinson is now a well-established and respected novelist with over fifteen successful books to her name and a series of detective novels that have found their way into television adaptations. But her debut novel, Behind the Scenes at the Museum, demonstrates what a skilful writer she is and one who is not afraid to experiment.

The book is a family saga of sorts, narrated by its youngest member, Ruby Lennox who begins her narrative from the womb. Each chapter takes us through the key points of Ruby’s life from 1951 to 1992 and in the process peels back the onion-layers of the family – especially the women. We get ‘footnote’ chapters that profile the lives of grandparents and the early years of her mother.

Ruby’s narrative eye remains non-judgemental – even when she’s acknowledging the faults and foibles of her mother, who doesn’t seem to love the child in the way you might expect. Despite the neutrality of Ruby’s commentary, the reader will pretty soon pick up the feeling that there are some dark revelations to come that will begin to explain some seeming mysteries.

Ruby’s sisters, Gillian and Patricia are also part of a tide of family tragedy that always seems to be lapping around their feet. One dies young and the other has an emotional breakdown occasioned by an unwanted pregnancy, leaving Ruby alone with her mother and father – but only briefly. When her father dies of a heart attack pursing his favourite pastime – other women – the child and mother are left alone.

But Ruby is in for more uncomfortable revelations when she discovers that she had been born a twin – her unknown twin sister, named Pearl, having also died in tragic circumstances. She also discovers that the roots of the antagonism she senses from her mother lie in the fact that she blames Ruby for her twin-sister’s death – something she has no memory of.

Helped by a doctor to recall the tragic event that killed Pearl, Ruby decides she can’t stay at home any longer and to escape she throws herself into a largely loveless marriage in Scotland that, despite having two children, ends after a relatively short time. When her mother dies of dementia, Ruby and Patricia finally find a kind of solidarity and resolve to raise their children in a way that ensures they will not suffer the kind of family upbringing they themselves had.

The book takes us deeply into the kind of secrets, tragedies and frustrations of family life that many readers will be able to recognise. The women, especially, are all trapped in one way or another and those that manage to escape a stifling domestic prison have to be hidden away – or rather they are explained away or ‘disappeared’. Ruby’s great-grandmother, Alice, for example, is always said to have died in childbirth but, we discover, this is just a family cover-story and the fact is that Alice actually ran away with a French photographer.

The book is full of disappointments and domestic tragedy – no-one here will ever get to be what they’d really like to be – but it’s never downbeat. As Ben Macintrye,  writing in The New York Times notes “Almost every character in this book is damaged and cauterized, desperately papering over the holes”  but  “behind all the half-filled holes and broken or lost things lies a rich, funny seam of hope, like the coal beneath the moors.”

Copies of the book, hardback and paperback, are easy enough to find and can be bought for well under £10.

 

Terry Potter

July 2023