There is in this novel, as in all of Ms. Atkinson’s, a sense of absurd predicament expressed in wonderful comic set pieces filled with material detail and running jokes ... So what is this extraordinarily entertaining novel really about? A great part of its genius is the way it can’t be summarized. It materializes out of foreshadowings, reverberations, revisions and transformations... And, indeed, Ms. Atkinson’s buoyant wit and cheerful irony make the misfortunes in these lives, including Juliet’s, not tragedies but kind-hearted lessons in the human condition.
Within a deceptively familiar form, Transcription treats the lives and labor of women with fresh complexity ... Atkinson has predicated her enormously successful career upon giving readers intelligent and artful iterations of what they already know they like ... In her best work—a category in which her latest, Transcription (Little, Brown), certainly belongs—she maneuvers the tropes of the murder-mystery genre, of historical fiction, and of privileged white Britishness into a kind of critical salvage of women’s work, women’s lives, that’s as heterodox, in its way, as Cusk’s ... before you know it Transcription has turned from a wartime spy yarn into a fuguelike meditation on the fungibility of female identity ... Far from interfering with the plot of Transcription, this meditation on identity kindles it ... Compared to a Cusk or a Smith (Ali or Zadie), Atkinson might appear to be a sort of literary matron, an aesthetic conservative unwilling or unable to adapt to the evolution of her art; but hers is a profoundly feminist project ... Atkinson’s witty, functionally elegant style in Transcription isn’t terribly distinctive, but it isn’t trying to be; the writing is always in service to the story.
Atkinson’s use of comedy in the first half of the novel is unexpected and inspired; even the Dada-esque chunks of Juliet’s transcription are animated by our awareness of her exasperated confusion as she types them ... The overburdened narrative loses focus, and the undisclosed 'horror' from 1940 asserts itself as a leitmotif in the form of ominous dialogue snippets — 'We’ve had rather a shock' and 'We must finish her off,' among others — that float through the text... The deeper problem in the last half of Transcription lies with Juliet. Beguiling as an excitable ingénue, she becomes cipherlike as the book progresses. Her actions seem unintelligible at times, her plucky asides almost perversely frivolous in the face of serious events.
What Juliet 'did' during the war — and beyond — makes for suspenseful reading, and Atkinson clearly has fun resuscitating classic white-knuckle moments from old espionage novels and films ... Espionage is a grim business, but Atkinson’s wry style imbues the world of Transcription with moments of brisk cheer, as if Ian Fleming had been crossed pollinated with Barbara Pym.
Transcription continues this exploration of the lies and inventions that make up a life, particularly during a time when all prior certainties—including identity—have been upended ... This idea of consequences, and of every choice exacting a price later, runs like a watermark through Transcription ... At times, the novel is guilty of making its historical parallels a little too emphatic ... Transcription stands alongside its immediate predecessors as a fine example of Atkinson’s mature work ... an unapologetic novel of ideas, which is also wise, funny and paced like a spy thriller. While it may lack the emotional sucker punch...Transcription exerts a gentler pull on the emotions, offering at the end a glimmer of hope, even as it asks us to consider again our recent history and the price of our individual and collective choices. It could hardly be more timely.
In this, her 10th novel, Atkinson probes the murkiness of identity, how easily a person slips between different fictions ... Transcription is also hard to pin down: it has the thrill of espionage, the twists and turns of a mystery, tempered with the poignancy of a coming-of-age novel. Moreover, the author revels in her tussle between fiction and fact, lacing the book with literary teases such as when a character chides ... These moments of pointing to the book’s textuality are clever, but risk jolting us out of the sheer pleasure of reading a pacy, witty, atmospheric novel ... In her novel’s complex web of fiction and fact, copies and originals, Atkinson shows that transcription can take us closer to the truth.
The concealed sharp edges of Juliet’s personality, evident even at this tender age, will delight Atkinson fans. This novelist specializes in female characters whose running internal monologues take witty, no-nonsense shots at the selfish and thoughtless ... In this sense, Atkinson suggests, all women are spies; they appear to be what others need them to be and contain a secret world all their own.
... stretches over four decades, never losing sight of its overriding theme exemplified by the story of Daedalus and Icarus — the perfect plot ... Atkinson keeps well the secret of who here is Daedalus and who is Icarus ... Her narrative is clever and serious yet not without the element of Atkinson’s trademark humor ... Kate Atkinson is a masterful manipulator of lies. Transcription is a spectacular game of deception, her own perfect plot. It is as twisty and efficient — everything falls into place like the tumblers of a combination lock — as the best of Le Carré.
If all of this plot-work sounds over-determined, that’s because it is. The time-shifts in Transcription, while not necessarily confusing, tend instead to be uprooting, dismantling the reader’s interest just when things are getting good, not to mention the fact that, cumulatively, they stand as a glaring monument to authorial intrusion in a plot that would seem to tell itself ... the strenuousness of the book’s storytelling starts to lean its full weight on what’s already happened and nearly crushes what’s to come. For the reader and for Atkinson, it almost feels like giving up ... Even so, nearly the entire first half of Transcription, with Juliet firmly embedded in the 1940 timeline for over a hundred pages, is engrossing and well orchestrated indeed. This is mostly a credit to Juliet’s understated expansiveness as a character ... Atkinson’s many expert depictions of fascism-in-the-offing are some the novel’s most disconcerting pleasures ... That distinctly British wryness, on full display throughout Transcription, is one of Atkinson’s strongest suits as a writer; all the same, it can get in her way ... two of Atkinson’s most irritating quirks in the novel: Juliet’s third-person limited close POV ... And then there’s those parenthetical reaction shots, ubiquitous throughout the novel, that clutter and over-stretch Atkinson’s syntax ... And so, sadly, after a taut and finely calibrated first half, Transcription’s second movement stumbles and falls ... The last third of Transcription, riddled with busy plotting and dramatic implausibility, banks on incoherence.
And through all of it, Atkinson is brilliant. Her characters are brilliant. Her command of the back-and-forth narrative, the un-fixedness of memory, the weight that guilt accrues over time and how we carry it is remarkable.
Transcription has its share of intrigues and secrets, but it also has a level of wit and poignancy that many espionage novels lack ... Based in part on archival records and period memoirs, Transcription is a rich, sometimes comic, always insightful peek at a unique aspect of British history. Learning about women who participated in the British Secret Service and the BBC is just icing on the cake.
Although 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.
When the book spends time in 1950 (the plot doesn’t unfold in chronological order), we get a better idea of who Juliet was, who she became and what her bruising life has done to her ... The book turns rueful, jaded and more than a little melodramatic as the bills come due for certain of Juliet’s heedless past actions. And there is a mess of a denouement ... These are not deterrents to reading this novel; they are hiccups, at worst ... Most lovably, the novel’s espionage-involved dog, Lily, is based on a real dog. Atkinson pays this dog real justice while making it clear that war is as awful for animals as it is for people ... Atkinson loves her research, but she doesn’t need much help concocting original stories that resemble no one else’s and take the breath away.
And Atkinson’s style is singular and delightful. No matter the genre, Atkinson displays more wit and word play, more delight in the fecundity of the English language, than just about any contemporary novelist ... There are plot twists and character turns throughout, all leading to a final — and, to me, less successful — revelation at the end. There’s also playful self-awareness about these twists and turns and revelations ... In Transcription, Atkinson has her genre cake and eats it, too. But it’s the icing, that verbal wit and life without which the cake wouldn’t be a cake, that most sustains and delights.
Juliet is the latest creation of Britain’s Kate Atkinson, an author almost unique in her ability to write like a wizard ... Atkinson is fascinated with the way the Fates toy with humans, teasing and tormenting until the thread of existence is snipped ... Atkinson’s exquisite prose, mordant wit and tenderness for her characters are on abundant display here but she doesn’t entirely answer the question of character, which in the best of novels drives the plot. The key to the riddle of Julia remains out of reach.
Atkinson’s new novel, Transcription, features both temporal tricks and layers of deceit ... Although engrossing from beginning to end, Transcription starts at a measured pace, with the tandem narratives only gradually gaining velocity. But when they are finally in sync and operating at peak capacity, the result is exhilarating ... Transcription is another triumph for Atkinson — suspenseful, moving, insightful and original.
Shuttling back and forth in time, now and then issuing such dramatic currency...Kate Atkinson’s Transcription presents us with a world in which nothing is what it seems...and where the war trumps all ...The narration is as self-conscious in its staginess as Juliet’s BBC productions ... But even though the narrative voice, approximating Juliet’s point of view, is hedged with parentheticals, contradicting, commenting, correcting...it’s hard to accept the last deception the novel reveals.
Her narrative is clever and serious yet not without the element of Atkinson’s trademark humor ... there is a comic fiasco of farcical proportions that becomes tragic ... Kate Atkinson is a masterful manipulator of lies. Transcription is a spectacular game of deception, her own perfect plot. It is as twisty and efficient—everything falls into place like the tumblers of a combination lock—as the best of Le Carré.
Its story might interest English readers more than American ones, but Atkinson hasn't lost her touch for plot and character. Transcription is an entertaining fast-paced read with the author's characteristic technique of playing with chronology to build layers of information that eventually add up to a logical conclusion ... Transcription is historical fiction at its best. Atkinson enjoys her research and uses it creatively to charm and inform her readers. She's not a pedant, but an accomplished storyteller with history as her background ... We don't see the denouement coming until it's right on top of us, although Atkinson has dropped clues throughout the novel, perhaps some too subtle to catch. Transcription tells a true story of the aftermath of World War II in Britain through the imagination of a talented, clever novelist who transforms the broad historical picture into a personal, intimate story.
Early scenes of Juliet’s transition are slow, with Ms. Atkinson laying out too much information about Juliet’s colleagues and Toby’s informants. But the novel gains considerable tension ... The postwar chapters may lack the drama of the wartime sections, but Juliet is always fascinating to follow. And Ms. Atkinson gives her a cutting wit.
Often, when writers attempt to tell two related but different stories, the reader picks a favorite and loses interest in the other. That’s never the case here. Atkinson is a masterful narrative strategist, linking her two stories by the appearance in Juliet’s postwar world of figures from her MI5 days and the suggestion that she is now at risk for what happened then ... And, as all of Atkinson’s readers know, she is an exquisite writer of prose, using language with startling precision whether she is plumbing an inner life, describing events of appalling violence, or displaying her characters’ wonderfully acerbic wit. Evoking such different but equally memorable works as Graham Greene’s The Human Factor (1978) and Margaret Drabble’s The Middle Ground (1980), this is a wonderful novel about making choices, failing to make them, and living, with some degree of grace, the lives our choices determine for us.
And once again, Atkinson, known for her skill at elevating genre forms into literature, takes on the British World War II experience ... Atkinson endows [her character, Juliet,] with a boundless imagination and a lively sense of humor ... Atkinson, bouncing back and forth in time, treats the reader to insights that a linear presentation would not provide. The end winds cunningly back to the beginning, as the author begins to spill the story’s secrets.
Just as Atkinson's Jackson Brodie novels borrow from mystery but exist in a category apart from that genre, her latest is a sort of demystified thriller. There is intrigue. There are surprises. But the unknowns aren’t always what we think they are. The deepest pleasure here, though, is the author’s language. As ever, Atkinson is sharp, precise, and funny. She might be the best Anglophone author working when it comes to adverbs ... Another beautifully crafted book from an author of great intelligence and empathy.
Atkinson’s suspenseful novel is enlivened by its heroine’s witty, sardonic voice as she is transformed from an innocent, unsophisticated young woman into a spy for Britain’s MI5 during WWI ... If Atkinson initially challenges credibility because Juliet slides too quickly from being a naive 18-year-old into a clever escape artist and cool conspirator, her transition into idealistic patriot and then ultimately jaded pawn in the espionage world is altogether believable ... The book ends on an uncertain note for Juliet, a poignant denouement for this transportive, wholly realized historical novel.
