Not the End of the World - Softcover

Atkinson, Kate

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0385605196 ISBN 13: 9780385605199

Publisher: Doubleday UK, 2002

Synopsis

Arthur is a precocious and inquisitive 8-year-old boy whose mother is a B-list celebrity more concerned with the state of her bank account than with her son's development. With a new baby on the way, Arthur's mother hires--or is she hired by?--an enigmatic young nanny named Missy, who takes Arthur under her wing. In pursuit of art, culture, and finally Arthur's own missing father, Missy introduces him to a world he never knew existed. It's Kate Atkinson's world, and Arthur is just one of its inhabitants--hidden connections link him to an entire constellation of characters who live unpredictably between reality and fantasy. The same wry humor and keen observation that have won Atkinson critical and popular acclaim make her new book crackle with life. Equally inspired by Ovid's Metamorphoses and Prada, by Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Barbie, NOT THE END OF THE WORLD is further proof of Kate Atkinson's formidable powers as a writer of comedy and substance.

About this title

About the Author:

Kate Atkinson was born in New York and now lives in Edinburgh. Her first novel, Behind the Scenes at the Museum, was named Whitbread Book of the Year in the U.K. in 1995 and was followed by Human Croquet and Emotionally Weird.

From Publishers Weekly:

Atkinson, who began her career with Behind the Scenes at the Museum, a Whitbread Book of the Year, and enjoyed good reviews for two more novels, now gathers together this suite of comparatively loosely connected stories. Atkinson's work has grown increasingly diffuse; her most recent book, Emotionally Weird, was printed in three fonts, representing separate strings of narrative. This collection takes that conceit without the typesetting extravagance one step further, opening and closing on two women who seem to tell one another the intervening tales. Atkinson's Scheherazades, singletons of indeterminate age named Charlene and Trudi, appear first in "a food hall as vast as a small city," and by the book's end which may or may not be the end of the world they're starving to death in a squalid, freezing flat in what feels like an apocalyptic present. In the women's restless imaginations, readers meet more than one girlfriend (in different stories, and each unbeknownst to the other) of a man named Hawk; a gaggle of perfect-toothed American Zane sisters; and a governess who may or may not be a goddess. Some of Atkinson's devices a giant cat who impregnates a woman with kittens, an evil twin who gets to have all the fun make for stories as simple as fables, but some, like the nanny goddess and the virtuoso, multiple-voiced "Dissonance," are sharp and memorable, full of astutely observed family dynamics. While not as intense or as unified as Atkinson's full-length work, this is a sharp and wholly original collection.
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About this edition

• Publisher: Doubleday UK
• Publication date: 2002
• ISBN 10: 0385605196
• ISBN 13: 9780385605199
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 249