Normal Rules Don’t Apply
By Kate Atkinson
Review by Louise (Lou) – Bookmarks and Stages
I am so excited to share my review of the latest book by Kate Atkinson – Normal Rules Don’t Apply. I savoured it and from today it can be yours as it is Publication Day. It’s a book of excellent short stories. Discover the strikingly gorgeous cover, the blurb and my review below.
The first story collection from Kate Atkinson in twenty years, Normal Rules Don’t Apply is a dazzling array of eleven interconnected tales from the bestselling author of Shrines of Gaiety and Life After Life
In this first full collection since Not the End of the World, we meet a queen who makes a bargain she cannot keep; a secretary who watches over the life she has just left; a man whose luck changes when a horse speaks to him.
With clockwork intricacy, inventiveness and sharp social observation, Kate Atkinson conjures a feast for the imagination, a constantly changing multiverse in which nothing is quite as it seems.
I love, love, love the title. The whole idea of being told ‘Normal Rules Don’t Apply’ is exceedingly appealing. The themes are powerful and striking, through life and death. The writing is absorbing, twisting your mind in all directions, full of different concepts, some perhaps already pondered and some perhaps not. The book from the off, has a certain aura and presence about it, saying “read me” and the plots of each short story, even more so. Kate Atkinson, I think it is fair to say, is as skilled at writing short stories as she is, her novels.
She creates seemingly normal worlds from the edges and then delve deeper into “Normal Rules Don’t Apply” and you find that you’ve got more than you bargained for because within the seemingly familiar is a touch of magic and fantasy. You discover that it is true, they do not apply. Readers are whisked into other worldly things, from certain characters doing the unexpected or certain events being unexpected. Nothing is as it first seems from story to story, propelling you from page to page and a desire to read more and more.
Atkinson has the skill to quickly hook a reader in, especially in the economy of words in a short story and reel them in and leave you wanting to read the others and before you know it, you’ve read them all and then sit still for a moment and think, before, just knowing that you’ll then dip in and out of them again.
There is life and death and strange goings-ons in Waitrose in The Void and ghostly occurrences in Blithe Spirit. Romance could be in the air for the “Indiscreet Bourgeoisie” with music filling the air and intriguing ideas, as well as something chilling too. Classic Quest 17 – Crime and Punishment will make you sit up and think about life and death, disease and medications. Puppies and Rainbows is more thought-provoking and deep than the title suggests with mental health being one of the subjects. This is just a few of the short stories, I have mentioned that all culminate quite wonderfully and fittingly, when the last title poses the question – What If?
This is a book that is sure to swirl round many minds, even after the very last page has been turned.
Thanks to Alison Barrow at Transworld books for sending me a gorgeous proof copy to review from, in exchange of an honest review.
Bookmarks and Stages by Lou 