Human Croquet: A Novel Paperback – 12 November 1999

I love Kate Atkinsons' writing, and don't quite know how I managed to miss this one, but deferred gratification is good, and Human Croquet was a huge pleasure to discover. I'm not going to bang on about the plot which is excellent. Suffice to say that Kate Atkinson likes play around with time and reality and messes with ones head quite delightfully, and this book is no exception. The characters are very well drawn, you've met some of them and probably know some too. She has an acute eye for human frailty and strength, not to mention general weirdness and a touch of evil here and there. It's a great book, read it!

This novel is a mix of family saga, time-travel and coming of age. There is lots of Kate Atkinson energy and fun but the plot is confusing and I didn’t warm to any of the characters. The time-travel episodes feel added on. I waited a long time for it to take off but it never happened. This is a long way from Kate Atkinson’s best.

Notes for ‘Human Croquet by Kate AtkinsonIt was a book where it helped to be familiar with Atkinson’s style. It was written between Behind the scenes at the museum and Life after LifeAnd thematically the three novels follow each other and develop the underlying themes as they go. That is not to say that the novels are a trilogy, the characters are not the same. Not the same in the story sense, but they are the same in the sense of a representative type. Atkinson does not disappoint, as always, her characters are appalling , unlikeable people, horribly flawed. Characters just like us readers and the people with whom we come into contact every day. Characters that have dark thoughts and inexplicable corners of the mind where reality and imagination merge to form alternative realities.Human Croquet runs riot on the theme of alternative realities as a precursor to Life after Life and gives the protagonist a more active role in the ‘time skip’ and family history theme than she had in Behind the Scenes.I found it a more challenging read than both other novels, so a newcomer to Atkinson might be a bit confused and find it hard going, not to say unsatisfactory. One really has to ‘get’ Atkinson’s style to appreciate the finesse and genius of the writing. Sentence by sentence it is beautiful stand alone prose, sentences put together to make sense of a plot requires memory and analysis of the prose sentence by sentence. But it is worth the work. If one was expecting a novel of historical fiction or romance, forget it. The historical background is incidental to the themes of the psychological study of the time dimension, the horribly flawed human condition, predestination, abandonment, alienation and general futility of life. It is overtly brutal in some places, more subtly so in others which make these more disturbing.The imagery sometimes feels overdone, but on reflection, this is not so, it has many layers and levels that can easily be missed. The woods, the forest and the trees are the real story, the characters are the trees.Some may find the ending device unsatisfactory and a disappointment. At first I would have agreed with this, even let out and audible groan. However, on reading on to the concluding chapters I realised that I had missed the utter brilliance of the underlying imagery. So much so, I have gone back to the beginning to re-read, and in doing so, am amazed at the absolute jaw dropping integrity of the whole novel.These Atkinson novels are always worth a few reads to really appreciate the nuances and how it is all put together. While many readers would not think it worth the study, others will find them almost life changing, and many will even find some psychological reassurance.

The basic idea is unusual and imaginative and the writing is superb as usual. However, about 2/3 of the way through the plot started meandering and it became rather confusing. Is Isobel delusional, highly imaginative or dreaming? Which thread is true, if any?I also wasn't sure about the place of the darker side of sex in the memories of a naive 16 year old school girl.

Having read all of Kate Atkinson's other books I finally discovered this one, which somehow I'd overlooked before. This turned out to be very handy as you would probably need to be familiar with and enjoy her time-hopping time-changing style to get the flow of this complex tale. (Life After Life and A God in Ruins are up there on my all time faves list).I struggled a little with this one at first but once hooked and invested in the characters I thoroughly enjoyed this weird family saga. I would recommend it to any fan of this fantastic author and am very pleased I finally stumbled on it.