Cannonball Read 11

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When all else failed, the mundane remained

Transcription by Kate Atkinson

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I stumbled upon Life After Life by Kate Atkinson after some favorable Cannonball reviews, and I really liked it. So when I saw that Atkinson had a new book out, Transcription (2018), I immediately put a hold on it at the library. Like the other books I’ve read by Atkinson, most of the events of this book take place in and around WWII. This story is split into two time frames. The first is during the war, where our protagonist, Juliet Armstrong, works as a typist for MI5. The second is after the war, about 1950 when Juliet Armstrong works as a radio […]

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9/16/2019 | 's CBR11 Review No:34 |

The getting of wisdom, he thought.

Big Sky by Kate Atkinson

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This is the fifth book in the Jackson Brodie series, and well, I don’t really feel compelled to run down the entire series for you for a couple of reasons. 1) I am not entirely sure I could tell you exactly what happens in every one of them or be able to correctly tell which thing happens in which book. I go back and forth on this series: a few of them I really like and a few of them, including the first one, I am kind of meh on. This one I am halfway between liking a lot and […]

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Buy the following on Amazon and help our mission to stick it to cancer, one book at a time:

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7/1/2019 | 's CBR11 Review No:381 |

Time was a thief, he stole your life away from you and the only way you could get it back was to outwit him and snatch it back

Case Histories by Kate Atkinson

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After a string of mediocre reads starting in mid-March and culminating in my first DNF of the year, I needed a win. I was just getting over the worst of the flu but pretty much still couch-bound and sick of TV, and I just wanted something easy and enjoyable to read. Turns out, the answer was staring me in the face. Literally. On the shelf beneath the TV, Kate Atkinson’s Case Histories looked up at me and said Trust in me, only in me. (I may or may not have still been running a fever.) Atkinson’s Life After Life and […]

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Buy the following on Amazon and help our mission to stick it to cancer, one book at a time:

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5/5/2019 | 's CBR11 Review No:23 |

an exercise in lying to liars

Transcription by Kate Atkinson

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What began as a slow and cold (le Carré-esque) waiting game grew into a white hot flash of deceit, anxiety, and dangerous thrills. I cannot claim to know the full horrors and trials of World War II- nor can I draw a true comparison between that dark time and the present, but the world of this book is a different world from our current version. One constant remains: the truth is subjective. In 1940 a young woman is recruited into the fold of MI5. Europe is falling, Britain is in peril, and…notes need typing. I found myself wrapped up in […]

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1/11/2019 | 's CBR11 Review No:2 |

(It’s a witty aside, do you see?)

Transcription by Kate Atkinson

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In 1940’s London, Juliet Armstrong is recruited to MI5. Initially doing mostly secretarial work, she finds herself tasked with more and more espionage, infiltrating right wing groups sympathising with Hitler. Ten years later, she’s working for the BBC when a run in with a former colleague brings her previous work back to haunt her. Is she going to pay for what she did for her country? I so struggled with this one, and it pains me to say it as I have enjoyed a couple of Atkinson’s other books this year. But this one was mostly tedious and confusing, with […]

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12/15/2018 's CBR10 Review No:45 |

Their names written on water. Or scorched into the earth. Or atomized into the air. Legion.

A God in Ruins by Kate Atkinson

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CBR10Bingo: This Is The End (BINGO!) Have you ever read a book that you hated to put down but also hated to keep reading because you couldn’t bear the thought of reaching the end? That’s how I felt reading Kate Atkinson’s A God in Ruins, the companion to her brilliant Life After Life.  Unlike Ursula in Life After Life, her younger brother Teddy only gets one shot at life. He still becomes a bomber pilot during World War II, still gets shot down over Germany, but this time he survives, captured and imprisoned for the last 18 months of the […]

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11/2/2018 's CBR10 Review No:60 |

I couldn’t even remember the title

Transcription by Kate Atkinson

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I’m honestly a little impressed that Atkinson managed to take a novel about World War II and Cold War espionage and make it downright forgettable. It’s one of those nested novels, taking place in three distinct time periods and each one flashing back to the other. If you’re anything like me, you’ll soon lose the ability to tell the various characters apart. Also, thanks so much all y’all for the congratulations 🙂 I’m still firmly ensconced in cloud nine and I’m afraid my reading and reviewing is suffering for it. I’ve got five books in my library queue and three […]

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10/31/2018 's CBR10 Review No:122 |

I might have been ten, eleven years old–I cannot say for certain–when my first master died. No one grieved him

Washington Black; Transcription; The Infinite Blacktop; Almanac for the Dead; Whose Body?; Hope in the Darkness by Esi Edugyan; Kate Atkinson; Sara Gran; Leslie Marmon Silko; Dorothy M Sayers; Rebecca Solnit

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Washington Black – 4/5 Stars This novel just recently was shortlisted for the Booker Prize, and by all rights, it should win. It also is possibly the front runner given that a Canadian author has not won in some time…possibly since Margaret Atwood for The Blind Assassin, but I’d have to check. It’s also quite simply the best book on the list that I’ve read and while I was worried it was going to be a little whimsical or odd, it’s actually nearly perfect. It’s Haiti in the 1830s on a sugar plantation owned by a British businessman. He also […]

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10/10/2018 's CBR10 Review No:364 |


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