Underneath it all there are secrets that only emerge slowly from the fog of the narrative and which throw the whole story into relief.īut there is plenty that we can learn from the Second World War and Atkinson also has an eye on contemporary relevance of events from seventy years ago: There is mistaken identity, dead drops, a close shave, an unwilling accomplice, and a cover up. But that does not mean Atkinson misses on any of the spy tropes.
But there are plenty of other references to classics including Dickens and Bronte. She is often comparing people and situations to Shakespeare or tossing off the odd quote (sometime parenthetically) even if this goes over her colleagues heads. Transcription is a very literary spy novel, partially because of Juliet’s fondness for literature. It is also during this later time that she starts to make sense of some of the events that she was too naïve or inexperienced to understand at the time. Neither job ends quite the way Juliet expects and she is concerned that the repercussions have followed her into her post-war life. Later she is also recruited to go undercover and infiltrate a circle of sympathisers. Juliet’s job is to sit in the flat next door and transcribe the conversations between Toby and his marks.
Godfrey Toby has been cultivating local fascists and Nazi sympathisers. In 1940, Juliette was recruited by MI5 to help them with a sting operation. Nesting backwards, the accident sends her memory back to 1950 when she worked at the BBC and then, remembering how she caught site of someone she worked with during the war, back further to 1940.
Transcription opens in 1981, ageing Juliet Armstrong is knocked over while crossing the road. This true story became the inspiration for her latest novel, Transcription, which has the feel of a spy novel although one that is on occasion slyly winking at its audience. While researching her previous book A God in Ruins she came across the story of Jack King, a bank clerk who helped in the early days of the war to entrap Nazi sympathisers in Britain.
Kate Atkinson has spent a bit of time recently in the Second World War.
0 kommentar(er)
