Normal Rules Don't Apply
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A dazzling collection of eleven interconnected stories from the bestselling, award-winning author of Shrines of Gaiety and Life After Life, with everything that readers love about her novels—the inventiveness, the verbal felicity, the sharp observations on human nature, and the deeply satisfying emotional wallop.
Nothing is quite as it seems in this collection of eleven dazzling stories. We meet a queen who makes a bargain she cannot keep; a secretary who watches over the life she has just left; a man who bets on a horse that may—or may not—have spoken to him. Everything that readers love about the novels of Kate Atkinson is here—the inventiveness, the verbal felicity, the sharp observations on human nature, and the deeply satisfying emotional wallop.
A startling and funny feast for the imagination, these stories conjure a multiverse of subtly connected worlds while illuminating the webs of chance and connection among us all.
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Elf korte verhalen, die enigszins met elkaar verbonden zijn, maar ook weer niet (dat enigszins). Een er van had ik al eerder gelezen (Shine! Pamela, shine!) de rest was nieuw voor me, al zijn ze deels al langer geleden elders gepubliceerd (was er toen al een plan om ze met elkaar te verbinden?) (ze gebruikt nog steeds best vaak haakjes overigens)
Van een man die op een paard wedt omdat het paard hem dat verteld, tot een vrouw die er achter komt dat ze dood is, tot een domineesvrouw die haar kinderen een sprookje vertelt, allemaal fijne individuele verhalen vol met rake observaties. Hoe verder je komt in het boek hoe meer blijkt dat ze allemaal toch wel erg met elkaar samenhangen en op elkaar ingrijpen.
“Chance, of course, Franklin knew, was the matter from which the universe had been constructed a long time ago by a roomful of monkeys trying to write a Shakespearian sonnet on old-fashioned typewriters.”
“In a newsagent's in the Metro Centre she had scanned endless front pages, but words were like hieroglyphs now, the world and its doings obfuscated from her view. Being dead had increased her vocabulary. ‘Obfuscate' and ‘hieroglyph' were not words Mandy had previously needed to employ.“
“It was true, without his own family spilling out of the front pew there would be hardly anyone at their father's Sunday services. Weddings were a different matter. Prospective brides queued up to secure St Cuthbert's because it was such a pretty church. ‘That's so hypocritical,' Florence said. ‘Of both them and you.' ‘Oh, I don't know,' her father said. ‘Why shouldn't people have a nice wedding in a nice church to look back on?' He was so tolerant! It infuriated Florence! (‘What doesn't?' her mother said.)”
