Shrines of Gaiety by Kate Atkinson

Doubleday, 2022, 445 p.

This book diverts from Atkinson’s previous novels I have read (set either in the present day or the Second World War) to engage with the 1920s – the aftermath of another huge conflict of course. It is a kind of detective novel, a kind of historical novel, a behind-the-scenes-of-criminal-life novel, an exploration of the hopes and dreams of runaways eager to make their names on the stage, and an illustration of everyday sexism.

It starts with the release of Nellie (Ma) Coker, an almost celebrity underworld figure, from Holloway prison where she had been imprisoned for breaching the licensing laws (her on-the-take policeman, Inspector Maddox, not having informed her of a raid.) A crowd has gathered, among them Chief Inspector Frobisher, sent to Bow Street nick to clean the place up and anxious to nail Nellie for her other criminal activities. To this end he has recruited Gwendolen Kelling, in the Great War a nurse and so used to the harsher side of life but more recently a librarian. She is down in London on behalf of her friend Cissy to see if she can locate Cissy’s runaway half-sister Freda Murgatroyd and her friend Florence Ingram.

Frobisher’s main concern, though, is the disappearances of girls (ie young women) some of whom end up in the River Thames; disappearances he suspects may be connected to the Coker empire.

Ma Coker’s enterprises are under threat; Maddox wants to take them over and a man calling himself Azzopardi is out for revenge for past wrongs done to him. Maddox’s companion in corruption, Sergeant Oakes, dubbed the Laughing Policeman because of the song, is anything but comedic.

This is by no means vintage Atkinson. (But did I have this reaction because the subject matter wasn’t as serious as World Wars? See the quote, “People always take war novels seriously,” from the same author’s A God in Ruins, in the third last paragraph of my review.)

Particularly in the early chapters here there is a feeling of writing by numbers. Frobisher has an unsatisfactory marriage and is unable to relate to people. Ma Coker is a familiar relatively unbending matriarch (though her hallucinations of a dripping wet Maud whom only she can  see are an unusual touch; however, not enough is made of them.) Her daughters Betty and Shirley are no more than background presences but Edith provides some jeopardy through her affair with Maddox. 11-year-old Kitty seems absurdly naïve for a scion of such a family.   Ma’s son Ramsay is a drug addict, a homosexual and entirely ineffective. Her other son Niven, a war veteran, is made of sterner stuff but finds himself strangely attracted to Gwendolen who in turn is perhaps a little too hands-on and gung-ho for the times – though her war-nursing background would have hardened her – and she seems to forget her primary reason for coming to London. There are too many viewpoint characters and an excess of flashback scenes.

It’s all entertaining enough though.

Pedant’s corner:- “open maw” (a maw is a stomach; an open stomach would be potentially catastrophic,) “an unnecessarily argumentative Glaswegian” (unnecessarily? Argumentativeness is in the job description,) Nicolaides’ (Nicolaides’s,) “was trying to her frighten her” (no need for that first ‘her’,) “a five shilling note” (I had never heard of these. They were withdrawn in 1928, but there was an emergency wartime issue in 1940,) elevator (in Britain it’s a lift. And this was in a boarding house, which would, most likely, in the1920s not have contained such a device.) “‘She not family’” (She’s not family.) “The desk sergeant had been at Verdun” (as far as I know the Allied troops at Verdun were exclusively French but I suppose there may have been British members of the Foreign Legion there,) “on the strait and narrow” (heretofore I had only ever seen this as ‘straight and narrow’ but both forms seem to be acceptable,) rooves (usually ‘roofs’ but it was in dialogue,) a missing end quote mark after a piece of dialogue, “comforter” (in Britain this is usually called a [baby’s] dummy,) uneducable (usually spelled ‘ineducable’.)

 

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