Echoes of Kate Atkinson on Thanksgiving Day
I'm so thankful for the opportunity to read the work of amazing writers like Kate Atkinson. From the front row in St. Andrews Wesley last weekend, I delighted to hear her read from her new novel and converse with Vancouver writer Alix Ohlin. I even had a word with her as she signed Transcription. Her latest novel portrays a typist transcribing material captured on hidden recorders by MI5 in WWII.
The transcriptions used, the author assures us, are not actual, but "close facsimiles." Because the technology was less advanced, they contain plenty of gaps and inaudible sections, just waiting to be fleshed out by heated imaginations. In this book, Atkinson says, "Nobody is trustworthy when they tell you who they are."
It's always fascinating to hear how writers create, and how they think about the worlds their novels spring from. I was fascinated to learn that MI5 periodically releases material from their archives into the national archives, where Atkinson did the research for this book. It was also interesting to learn that MI5 used microphones plastered into walls.
Ms. Atkinson says her novel shows how the British "present themselves to themselves" as they look back at the war "through propaganda that we still have." She portrays Juliet, her protagonist, as a scholarship girl who "has been moved out of her class," and "is in exile from herself from the very beginning."
Other comments that stood out for me concerned the world of the time, when aged 18 in 1943, Juliet "has no idea that homosexuality exists." The character of Perry, a gay man, is based on that of Max Knight, (whom I met while reading Rendezvous at the Russian Tea Rooms). This skilled spymaster began his life as a naturalist, and after the war became Uncle Mac, host of a children's nature program on BBC.
When interviewer Ohlin said how much she enjoyed the telling details about food, clothing and household, Atkinson responded by saying "I think I was alive during that period, but I wasn't." Speaking of food, she also informed her audience that "If you could hunt or shoot it, it wasn't rationed," adding that the post-war British diet was "really, truly appalling."
I was also delighted to learn that Jackson Brodie will be back. Indeed, she has finished the new book, and it will coming out soon. I was deeply relieved to hear that although she "did think of killing him off, he's not dead." It was profoundly pleasing to hear that in her "far distant future," she has a "big complicated novel about the early days of the railway."
Though readers find many moments in her novels hilariously funny, Atkinson's humour is "organic;" she never thinks about it while writing. She also feels she writes "filmically," but this too is not a conscious choice. Historical novels like hers, though "not necessarily true," contain "the essence of truth." I couldn't agree more.
A side note supports this idea: after publishing the book, she received a number of touching letters from children of men who flew the bombers. They said it helped them to better understand their dead fathers.