Atkinson knows how to create quirky characters and I always enjoy her writing style. She just has a unique way with words.

Transcription by Kate Atkinson is a well-written work of historical/literary fiction. Historical fiction is my favorite genre and the author did a great job with characterizations and development of the time-period. I was a little underwhelmed though with this one. I felt as if I were waiting for something to happen and when it did, it was underwhelming. However, this book was very well-written and exhibited well-developed characters and is definitely worth reading.

I received a review copy of this book from the publisher through NetGalley for my honest review. Opinions expressed in this review are completely my own.

Synopsis from the Publisher/NetGalley.com
In 1940, eighteen-year old Juliet Armstrong is reluctantly recruited into the world of espionage. Sent to an obscure department of MI5 tasked with monitoring the comings and goings of British Fascist sympathizers, she discovers the work to be by turns both tedious and terrifying. But after the war has ended, she presumes the events of those years have been relegated to the past forever.

Ten years later, now a radio producer at the BBC, Juliet is unexpectedly confronted by figures from her past. A different war is being fought now, on a different battleground, but Juliet finds herself once more under threat. A bill of reckoning is due, and she finally begins to realize that there is no action without consequence.

Really wonderful. I would have done in audio and included in my San Francisco Chronicle column, but The paper already had it covered and the fall is so full of books that we try not to duplicate. I bought a hardcover for my husband, who is reading it now, and enjoying it too.

Unfortunately, I just couldn't wade through this book. I tried twice, and the characters were too numerous and didn't hold my interest. As an American who was born after WWII, I found it difficult to follow the time, place, and (in)action. I found myself looking up too many words on the Kindle. One character is described as Pooterish. The definition of that indicated a term that originated in 1960s based on a character from a work created in 1800s. At about that point, I gave up.

I skipped to the Author's Memo at the end, but even that seemed rambling, and did not encourage me to return to the book. A pity, since I have enjoyed other books by this author: Life after Life was fantastic. A God in Ruins was good. On the other hand, I also gave up on "Started Early, Took my dog". I didn't read the earlier Jackson Brodie book(s), so couldn't relate.

I think that there will be many readers who will enjoy this book, but it just wasn't for me.

Thank you Netgalley and Doubleday for the advance ebook copy.

British author Kate Atkinson’s eleventh novel, Transcription, was published at the end of September. It returns to a wartime setting like her award-winning novel Life after Life (and its companion piece, A God in Ruins) but from a totally different angle.

The setting of this novel takes place entirely on the WW II home-front and it’s genre is spy novel. The story is told through the voice of protagonist, Juliet, who is 18 years old when she is recruited by MI5 from a secretarial typing pool to act as general dogsbody in a surveillance sting in 1940.

Atkinson got the idea from files in the British National Archives about a real-life agent who posed as an undercover Gestapo officer during the phoney war of 1939-40 to lure fifth columnists (British citizens who were Nazi sympathizers) to a bugged room off Edgware Road. Atkinson was even more intrigued by a minor character in those files—a girl/transcriber/underling/eavesdropper who transcribed what was said by the spy and the Nazi sympathizers next door. A girl whose personality left tiny traces in the transcriptions.

I did not find this novel as polished or the characters as developed as those of Atkinson’s earlier novels, but Atkinson is quite a witty and somewhat humorous writer, and there were very entertainingly written portions. Since Juliet’s job is to transcribe these conversations, some of the humor in “Transcription” derives from her frustrations in trying to make sense of what’s often a mass of indiscernible mumbles among these eccentric fifth-columnists. And the discernible conversations are also droll. Here is an excerpt from the book containing one of Juliet’s transcriptions from the flat next door:

“Trude suddenly declared vehemently, ‘Let’s hope the Germans bomb us the way they bombed Rotterdam.’
‘Goodness, why?’ Mrs Scaife asked, rather taken aback by the savagery of this outburst.
‘Because then the cowards in government will capitulate and make peace with the Third Reich.’
‘Do have a scone,’ Mrs Scaife said appeasingly.”

This is a traditional spy story containing double agents, disappearing ink, corpses spirited away in rugs, mysterious characters appearing from dark corners and on foggy streets, and recording devices hidden in walls. Juliet soon learns to use a pistol — and even a sharp knitting needle — when backed into a tight corner. Her long hours at the typewriter and quick thinking and adaptivity lead to her her promotion to fieldwork, where she is given a new identity and asked to infiltrate something called “The Right Club” who are also Nazi sympathizers.

Atkinson never seems to write a straightforward chronological narrative in her books. One of the author’s favorite books is purported to be Alice’s Adventures In Wonderland, and her characters do seem to appear and disappear at unexpected times just like those in that novel. She usually jumps around, traveling from the future to the past and points in between to give her readers glimpses of how the characters will eventually turn out.

The very first page of “Transcription” opens on the day of Juliet’s death in 1981 when she is hit by a car. Scattered in between are long sections of the story set in 1950, ten years after Juliet’s wartime adventures, when Juliet is employed by BBC radio as a producer of educational programs. All is not well, though, in Juliet’s postwar life. She senses she is being followed and begins receiving anonymous notes that someone has begun dropping off at the BBC. Addressed to Juliet, the notes warn that “you will pay for what you did.”

Two quotes from the book about Juliet Armstrong that are examples of this:

“And then there was Juliet Armstrong, of course, who some days seemed like the most fictitious of them all, despite being the ‘real’ Juliet. But then what constituted real? Wasn’t everything, even this life itself, just a game of deception?”

And at the end of the book:

“Come now, quite enough of exposition and explanation. We’re not approaching the end of a novel, Miss Armstrong,” a minor character says.

Of course, all of these glimpses of the future explain, bit by bit, what happened during those wartime years.

Thank you Little, Brown and Company and NetGalley for the Advanced Reader’s Copy of the novel and for allowing me to review it.

This book is classic Atkinson whom we know and love because of her meticulous details about little-known history, her wry sense of humor, and her evocative language. And another of Atkinson's fiction hallmarks is ever-present here: how secrets and lies always have consequences.

The WWII spy, Juliet, is a memorable main character because of her smarts, her wit, and her fearlessness. Her inner monologues throughout alternate between sharply funny and wryly ironic creating a uniquely interesting voice and point of view.

It is always easy to get immersed in an Atkinson world as a reader and, when we emerge from it, we see our own world as if after the rain clouds have cleared. There are so many connecting strands in this story that, sometimes, it's not clear where they're all headed. Atkinson is such a skilled writer, though, that she always manages to bring them all together. And she does it in ways that are never predictable.

I don't want to give away the story so I'll leave it there. A spy thriller, if you like, but a literary one. Which is, for me, the best kind.

https://www.highbrowmagazine.com/9443-ghosts-and-spies-emerge-london-fog-kate-atkinson-s-transcription


Ghosts and Spies Emerge From London Fog in Kate Atkinson’s ‘Transcription’ | Highbrow Magazine
Transcription

By Kate Atkinson

Little, Brown

352 pages

Kate Atkinson’s new novel, Transcription, opens with her characteristic time-shift hocus-pocus. We start in London, 1980, at the scene of a pedestrian accident. Soon thereafter, it’s 1940. The victim of that accident, Juliet Armstrong, is a young woman who works for British intelligence, transcribing secret discussions among a coterie of England’s Nazi sympathizers. Later we encounter Juliet in 1950, during London’s grim postwar years.

In all of these timeframes, things, as they say, don’t go well.

For much of Transcription, it’s fun to anticipate what’s taking place before our eyes. The early sections of the novel are deft and riveting. Atkinson’s lively prose keeps the narrative humming along, as in the moment when Juliet recognizes a key figure from her time as an MI5 operative:

“He paused in his stride, his back to her. There was the lightest talcum of dandruff on the shoulders of his greasy gabardine trench. It looked the same as the one that he had worn throughout the war. Did he never buy new clothes? She waited for him to turn round and deny himself again, but after a beat he simply walked on, the cane tap-tap-tapping on the gray London pavement.”

Atkinson quickly establishes place, diction, and a credible spirit of wartime and postwar milieus—while rarely getting bogged down in unnecessary exposition. The tone in the early chapters is both keenly literary and vividly cinematic.



Confusion arises, however, with a plethora of secondary characters, i.e., the German sympathizers and double agents, some of whom are being “run” by Godfrey Tobey, some by Perry (her boss). The reader might be forgiven for wondering why many of these clandestine members of the Fifth Column talk so openly about “working for Berlin” or “spying for the Gestapo” in the midst of wartime England.

At the same time, Atkinson captures the anxiety and uncertainty of those days when England was under siege: “What if there was a greater deception game in play? What if Godfrey really was a Gestapo agent? A Gestapo agent pretending to be an MI5 agent pretending to be a Gestapo agent. It made her head hurt to think about it.”

A sizeable portion of the close third-person point of view is framed in the shape of rhetorical questions. (“Where had he been since the end of the war? Why had he returned? And, most puzzling of all, why would he pretend not to recognize her?”) This continuous internal questioning draws undue attention to itself, diluting the tension being carefully orchestrated in the narrative.

In London, 1950, Juliet works as radio programmer for BBC, with lingering MI5 responsibilities. Several coincidental encounters occur, with characters, sinister and otherwise, reemerging from the London mist (and from her recent past) to observe and distract her. But Juliet remains oddly dismissive of these suspicious circumstances. Events are catching up with her, but her emotional response feels more like irritation than alarm.



The frivolous nature of this response, the fairly ceaseless internal monologues and an ongoing play on words, all add a dissonant element to the story. If the reader sees that life in 1950 is significantly more threatening to Juliet than Juliet herself does—after all, she’s in some sense an experienced covert operative—it creates a distance from the character that the story never really overcomes.

Late in the novel, when an act of violence occurs, the impact feels diminished by Juliet’s earlier flippant attitude towards serious events. Also, the scene feels rushed and distanced—in contrast to other similarly gruesome occurrences in recent espionage fiction, such as Ian McEwan’s The Innocent, where the horrors of murder (and its grisly aftermath) are described in visceral, shuddering terms.

Still, Atkinson is expert at moving the plot along and summing up characters in a brushstroke: “She had fierce eyebrows and seemed mournfully Russian, sighing in the tragic way of a woman whose cherry orchard had been chopped down …” The clever use of transcribed conversations (with all of their miscues, mumbled words, etc.) adds to the clandestine atmosphere. Wartime and postwar England are evidently irresistible subjects for high-end novelists (see Michael Ondaatje’s Warlight), and Atkinson adds her unique, stylistic spin to the proceedings.

Author Bio:

Lee Polevoi, Highbrow Magazine’s chief book critic, has recently completed a novel, The Confessions of Gabriel Ash.

For Highbrow Magazine

I have mixed feelings about this book. It is very well written with excellent characterization, which I think overcomes the shortcomings. But the plot itself, especially at the end, is somewhat underwhelming.

Historical Fiction
Adult
Transcription, by Kate Atkinson (image)
The author of Life After Life returns with what is overtly a British World War II spy novel, filled with espionage, double agents, secrets, lies, and eventually murder. But it is also a spectacular commentary on the many lives of womanhood. Opening (and closing) in 1981 when Juliet Armstrong is hit by a car, the bulk of the book shifts back and forth between 1940 and 1950. Juliet is not yet 20 years old when she is recruited to Britain’s MI5, as the war with Hitler is raging. Her hopes for tertiary education are dashed when her mother dies unexpectedly. Armed instead with secretarial skills, she’s hired to transcribe recordings of meetings with Fascist sympathizers in Britain who think they are reporting to a German agent.
Juliet quickly ascends to a spy role herself, though the new responsibility doesn’t relieve her of the tedium of transcription. Or being asked to make tea, and eventually clean up a mess of blood. And everyone but the naive young Juliet knows her boss is gay, which is how she ends up engaged to him, not that that adds in the least to her sexual education. A decade later, key incidents from 1940 return to shadow Juliet’s new life as a producer for the BBC. As the timeline shifts back and forth, Atkinson uses foreshadowing and dark hints to create a sense of pending doom. Loaded with cultural references to everything from Shakespeare to Gilbert and Sullivan, Atkinson lightens the seriousness of Juliet’s life through sparkling dialogue between the memorable characters, as well as Juliet’s wickedly unfiltered inner commentary. Honestly, that’s the best writing of all: at a funeral, she thinks: “There was really very little difference between Dolly being alive and Dolly being dead. Except for Dolly, of course.” An afterword by the author offers a bit of insight into the genesis of the book, emphasising how the fiction trumps the historical. My thanks to publisher Little, Brown for the advance reading copy provided digitally through NetGalley in exchange for my honest review.
More discussion and reviews of this novel: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/37946414

Atkinson keeps your guessing until the very end.
During World War II, Juliet Armstrong had been enlisted by the British intelligence service, M15. Her job was to transcribe the activities of British Nazi sympathizers. The War had ended and Juliet had moved on with her life, supposing that part was over and done with.
Life has a strange way of catching up with your prior doings and that is just what happens to Juliet. The plot is fascinating and the writing superb. The twist at the end is so unexpected and serves to reinforce the talent of Atkinson.

Transcription is a new breed of historical fiction. One of which that starts slowly but before you know what has happened you are deep inside the world of which you are reading. Once I was hooked on the storyline, (and I'll admit it took a couple of chapters) I could not put this down. I wanted to understand more and at times I heavily disagreed with the main charachter; Juliet. A fantastic historical fiction read.

I received this book free of charge from NetGalley in exchange for my honest review.

This book didn’t do it for me. I normally like historical fiction, especially from the WWII era, so I thought I’d like this one about WWII spies. The characters were blah, I struggled to stay engaged with what little plot was going on, and once or twice thought about giving up on the book entirely.

Maybe it’s the author. I think I’m in the minority, but I didn’t love “Life After Life,” for many of the same reasons this one fell flat for me. I might just stay away from Kate Atkinson in the future.

I keep thinking that I'm going to like Kate Atkinson's writing more than I do. I pushed through reading this as it was an ARC, but I found that it only hooked me in the last 20% of it or so, which is way after I would have put it down with a typical read.

Transcription is complex, sometimes confusing., but also intriguing. During some sections I literally couldn't stop reading.

Juliet Armstrong is 18 when she begins work in 1940 as a transcriptionist for MI5, England's intelligence organization. The job is to secretly listen in to meetings between an undercover agent and British Nazi sympathizers, making a transcript of the conversations. In addition to the undercover agent, there are many supporting characters, most MI5 employees. Eventually Juliet will do some undercover work herself.

While reading Transcription I was very engaged, although once in a while I felt disconnected with one particular character. The ending was totally unexpected and while it stunned me, it was interestingly plausible.

A LibraryReads selection in September, TRANSCRIPTION by Kate Atkinson is a suspenseful work of historical fiction set during the Second World War and 1950s London. The main character is Juliet who at 18 is first employed to rather naively transcribe wartime conversations for the British intelligence service, MI5, and who increasingly becomes involved in espionage activities, and later works as a BBC producer on children's programming. Once again, Atkinson describes how events and choices reverberate across time, causing the reader to reflect on the meaning of patriotism, on guilt, and on fate's tragic repercussions. TRANSCRIPTION received starred reviews from Booklist, Kirkus, and Library Journal.

Transcription is a very atmospheric book. The walls are closing in on Juliet's life, both in the part set during the early days of the Second World War and in 1950. What choices has she had, and which were made for her since she was always acting as someone's "girl"/secretary? Compellingly written, and it was refreshing to have an unvarnished and unglamorous version of a homefront MI5 initiative to root out British Nazi sympathizers. Juliet feels real and flawed, and the trauma of the war haunts her and her compatriots in a believable way. I was frustrated by a rather sudden ending of revelation upon revelations, which felt unearned. I preferred the story and motivation as it seemed to be for 90% of the book.

While I'm not a devoted fan of WWII-era historical fiction, I really enjoyed Kate Atkinson's transcription, and the combination of historical fiction with a touch of MI5 spies was engaging and fun to read. I especially enjoyed Atkinson's development of Juliet, who felt relatable throughout the five decades that the story spanned. Her obsession with figures of speech was amusing and paired well with the frequent flashbacks to past and future dialogue. These flashbacks (and flash-forwards) helped to weave a story that moved back and forth through time seamlessly. Atkinson's note on the historical facts, or lack of, in the book was interesting to read after finishing the story -- there is definitely some historical basis for the novel, and the admitted liberties Atkinson takes make for a better read.

Disappointing. Life After Life is one of the most beautifully written and clever books I have read. Transcription fell flat in so many ways. Mainly it was boring. I wasn't interested in the characters or the plot - a death sentence. There was a beautiful turn of phrase here and there but it was just a struggle to finish this one.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for a copy of this book in exchange for my honest review.

When we meet Juliet Armstrong, it's 1980, and she's just been struck by a car. As she tries to make sense of what's going on, it flashes back to 1940, when recently orphaned Juliet has just begun working for an office of MI5, transcribing recorded conversations from double agents and German spies; and 1950, where post-war Juliet works at the BBC. The story jumps back and forth, revealing more about the spies - and Juliet - as figures from her past pop up to endanger her present.

This was very well done. Atkinson has done her research, and does a marvelous job of detailing the WWII MI5 set-up and the feel of the BBC (as evidenced by her extensive bibliography). A lot of the story is based on real events and people, and Atkinson does a good job of bring those to life.

There's a sense of creeping foreboding as Juliet gets more and more involved in the spy world, but Atkinson has a very dry sense of humor that shows through repeatedly. (I laughed out loud at this: "Why was it the female of the species were always the ones left to tidy up, she wondered? I expect Jesus came out of the tomb, Juliet thought, and said to his mother, "Can you tidy it up a bit back there?" ") For a spy thriller, it's not especially fast-paced, but I don't think that was Atkinson's intent, she's more interested in why people do things then what they're doing.

Loved it. Loved the pace and the ending. Found it much more accessible than her other books. The main character was someone I could appreciate and root for, even though she was not 100% good.