MixedThe GuardianAlthough Transcription does not belong with her recent twinned novels Life After Life and A God in Ruins, it is a historical continuation ... this latest book brings us into the war’s drab aftermath. This is the London of pea soupers and tinned peas, where everyone is a casualty in some way. The fog is not there just to create mood (\'that’s all I need, Juliet thought—atmosphere\'); it symbolizes the \'fog of obfuscation\' in which they are all operating. This is a novel about identity in which no one and nothing is exactly as they seem—a spy novel, in short ... there is something unusually stagey about Transcription, with its fondness for italics, whispered asides and jaunty rhyming. At times this can make the novel seem as camp as the coffee ... Atkinson is too accomplished and careful a writer for this to be sloppiness, as Juliet’s knowing riffs on cliche and metaphor suggest. This may be reading too much between the lines, but the countless references to plays, films and acting are hard to miss ... What elevates her fiction above mere playfulness is the emotional integrity of her characters ... Juliet’s worldweariness and face-powder dry wit make her an affecting, engaging companion, but not necessarily one to love: she lacks the warmth of Atkinson’s most compelling characters ... tricksiness inevitably makes her difficult to review without revealing too much, and Transcription, which seems to begin at the end (remember Shostakovich?), is no exception. Some readers might find it simply slight rather than clever sleight of hand, but Atkinson always puts on a damn fine show.
Rachel Kushner
RaveThe GuardianKushner’s subject is her country’s fall from grace. This is not the land of the free; no one has choices and everyone is guilty ...They are all prisoners of circumstance, from the inmates to the officers (\'no guard wanted to work in a women’s prison\'). Taken over by agricultural machinery and deserted by people, Kushner’s California is \'a man-made hell on earth,\' where the water is poisonous and even the air is bad ... . Rich in detail and noisy with voices, The Mars Room is an immersive reading experience, in a tradition of fiction drawing on American social history. Just occasionally it resembles a reporter’s novel, the characters becoming suspiciously sassy mouthpieces. But Kushner’s prose fizzes as dangerously as the electric fence around Stanville, her observations spiky as barbed wire, her humour desert-sky dark. This may not be an enjoyable novel, but it marks you like a tattoo.
