PositiveThe Sydney Morning Herald (AUS)Kate Atkinson has the gift of creating intrigue. Her new novel, Shrines of Gaiety, will please fans of her detective fiction, and the BBC television series, Case Histories, that has been adapted from it ... This is a pleasurable well-made novel, by turns charming and jarring, but in its representation of the elusive city it depicts it owes a lot to historical research while also using a Moby-Dick-like approach to a narrative of characters searching for an elusive goal ... While the story lacks the meditative, metaphysical aspect of Melville, it is touched by a melancholy that shows Atkinson inhabits her characters and their emotions ... a bit uneven and there are times when the story of single women versus the horrors of the big city might have had more tonal variety ... Still, this is a sharp, witty, likeable book, with existential notes as well as comic ones. Atkinson’s writing is a treasure trove waiting to be discovered for the uninitiated, but any writer who can channel the philosophy of the 19th century with the colour of the 20th can hold your attention from page to page.
