Shrines of Gaiety
The Sunday Times Bestseller, May 2023
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4.3 • 116 Ratings
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- £5.99
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- £5.99
Publisher Description
'Atkinson on her finest form. A marvel of plate-spinning narrative knowhow, a peak performance of consummate control.' OBSERVER
'This is the perfect novel for uncertain times.' THE TIMES
'I can think of few writers other than Dickens who can match it' SUNDAY TIMES
'Brilliant' RICHARD OSMAN
'Kate Atkinson is simply one of the best writers working today, anywhere in the world' GILLIAN FLYNN
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1926, and in a country still recovering from the Great War, London has become the focus for a delirious new nightlife. In the clubs of Soho, peers of the realm rub shoulders with starlets, foreign dignitaries with gangsters, and girls sell dances for a shilling a time.
At the heart of this glittering world is notorious Nellie Coker, ruthless but also ambitious to advance her six children, including the enigmatic eldest, Niven whose character has been forged in the crucible of the Somme. But success breeds enemies, and Nellie's empire faces threats from without and within. For beneath the dazzle of Soho's gaiety, there is a dark underbelly, a world in which it is all too easy to become lost.
With her unique Dickensian flair, Kate Atkinson brings together a glittering cast of characters in a truly mesmeric novel that captures the uncertainty and mutability of life; of a world in which nothing is quite as it seems.
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'Seduction, betrayal, and larger-than-life characters that will have you hooked until the last page' SUNDAY TELEGRAPH
'This book is one to savour, for the energy, for the wit, for the tenderness of characterisation that make Atkinson enduringly popular' GUARDIAN
'As vividly filthy, populous, dangerous as anything described by Dickens, but writing is closer to Thackeray's...Atkinson is a novelist of unrivalled immediacy, authority, and skill.' FINANCIAL TIMES
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
Over the course of the last three decades, Kate Atkinson has written crime fiction, period novels and stories with a supernatural element. In Shrines of Gaiety, she combines all three with a dash of history, drawing inspiration from the real-life story of “Night Club Queen” Kate Meyrick for this endlessly enjoyable murder mystery. Opening outside the gates of Holloway Prison as notorious club owner Nellie Coker is released to continue her dubious reign over nightlife in 1930s’ London, Atkinson gradually unspools a lively narrative as twisty and puzzling as the murky Soho backstreets the story plays out on. Threats to the ill-gotten Coker empire lurk behind every corner—from mysterious figures out for revenge, provincial librarians with hidden agendas, haunting spectres dripping retribution, police officers both virtuous and corrupt—and even Nellie’s motley brood of six self-interested children can’t be trusted. The ongoing turf war wraps around another sinister plot thread concerning a spate of disappearances involving young women, and as more details are revealed, it becomes clearer that there is a far more malevolent evil than the Coker’s criminal enterprises to contend with. It takes a long time for all the vividly characterised, wildly unforgettable players in this cat-and-mouse game to move into their position on the board, but keeping up with the rapidly evolving landscape of who knows what, who is spying on who, and whose loyalties have shifted where, sustains momentum to the end. Atkinson’s animated writing style brings humour and charm to her portrayal of the razzle dazzle masking London’s seedy underbelly, and the pleasure-seeking desperation of a nation emerging from the hellish psychological pits of the First World War.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
The title of Atkinson's glittering foray into London's post-WWI Soho (after Big Sky) comes from the obituary of real-life club maven Kate Meyrick, the inspiration for protagonist Nellie Coker. It's cause for celebration in 1926 when a "party crowd of motley provenance" gathers to greet Coker on her release from Holloway women's prison after her arrest in a raid on her illegal club. They include most of her six children; moral crusader Det. Chief Insp. John Frobisher of Bow Street Station; and outsider Gwendolyn Kelling, a York librarian and former war nurse seeking two female friends who, like many a girl in the vile city, have gone missing or been dumped in the Thames—and some of them worked for Nellie. Overlapping plots reveal nefarious schemes to end Nellie's firm grip on her five dens of iniquity, which are frequented by royalty and celebrities. Nellie will not go down easily amid internecine family battles, corrupt police forces, and ghosts from the past out for bloody revenge. The long shadow of the Great War gives way to the fuggy Jazz Age atmosphere of dance halls, drug dens, Belgravia spielers, abortionists, and roving pickpockets who take to the "stage of duplicity and disguise," as Gwendolyn views the demimonde while working undercover for Frobisher. Atkinson's incisive prose and byzantine narrative elegantly excavate the deceit, depravity, and destruction of Nellie's world. She also turns this rich historical into a sophisticated cat-and-mouse tale as the various actors try to move in on Nellie's turf. Atkinson is writing at the top of her game.
Customer Reviews
Disappointing
Slow start (I was very tempted to give up), starter picking up towards the end, but a poor ending. Wasn’t really engaged with the characters. Disappointing.