It's always a joy when I see Kate Atkinson has a new book out. I know I'll be burying myself in it late a night till I've finished and Shrines of Gaiety was no different. It has all the expected traits of her writing: deeply developed characters, descriptive locations and history, and a dark wit throughout it all.

My undying adoration for Kate Atkinson. I loved Life After Life . I enjoy her other works more than this one. When I finally got going, it was painfully slow. Neither the plot nor the characters ever interested me. In 1920s London, between the wars, a family operates several nightclubs. The mystery surrounds the club girls who have vanished and the detective who is determined to track them down. My disconnected listening slowed the conversation down. I listened to it, but I still couldn't follow the story. There was a lot of text to wade through, and the mystery was so buried that I often missed it until the author drew my attention to it. I had great joy in reading about Freda and Flora's travels. The closing message from the author was one of my favorite parts. It clarified her appreciation and allusion, and it left me wishing I had more of an appreciation for it. I give this 2.5 rounded up.

Thank you so much to #Netgalley and @Doubledaybooks for this advanced copy for an honest review.

A fun, fuzzy portrait of a family of nightclub owners in a London still dealing from WWI. And a detective who want to bring them down. Great characters. Better than your average historic fiction.

Kate Atkinson scores again. 1926 London is rather wild. Nightclubs abound and the darlings of society rub elbows with the rougher elements. Nellie Coker is taking full advantage of the times. She and her six children operate a number of clubs, each catering to slightly different tastes. She is both notorious and successful. So of course she has enemies and is of interest to the law. Kate Atkinson weaves a delightful tapestry of intersecting lives and events creating another masterpiece of storytelling.

Quite possibly my favorite Atkinson yet. And that is saying something. I am so hoping there's a sequel.
Kate seems like she was ready for some fun.

London, 1926.. the city and the country are in a party mode after the end of the Great War. People are flocking to nightclubs and bars. You never know who you could meet on any given night. The rich, the stars and the like mingle night after night and enjoy every excess they can find. Nellie Cocker, is the queen of the this nightlife. She has multiple clubs all over Soho and she is ringing in the money nightly. She has 6 children and wants to create this empire for them. So they can be elevated to a new social status. They are all flaws though and don’t seem to have the work ethic or the guts, to run this empire. In fact they are all a bit of a mess. The more successful she becomes , the more enemies she has. Anyone at anytime could be out there trying to bring her world down. I have read many books by Kate Atkinson and this story was one of her best. Her character development, her ability to make you feel like you are in 1926 London is amazing. She describes the nightlife as well as the depravity of the underworld of London. She doesn’t miss a thing. This was a 4 star read for me. I want to thank Netgalley & the author for my copy for an honest review.. I was an absolute pleasure reading & reading and reviewing this one. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.

My first Kate Atikinson (SOMEHOW) but this will not be my last.
There was alot going on in this one, ALOT, and now I want to see it on some sort of screen adaptation.
All the Roaring 20s feelings with enough crime and characters to keep me constantly wanting to pick this one back up whenever I wasn't reading it.,

An engrossing tale set in the underworld of post WWI London. Vividly imagined characters, an intriguing plot, and gorgeously described setting. I loved it!

This was a slow start to me - starting it at the beginning of the month and putting it down a handful of times before finally digging in. And, my oh my am I glad that I did. This is one of those amazing novels that twines so many characters into each other's paths - and I think perhaps this is where I struggled in the beginning - how is this all going to coalesce. But coalesce it does!

Nellie Coker runs a handful of nightclubs in London shortly after the Great War with the protection of the police and the help of her children. But there is a new detective on the force, intent on rooting out corruption. A cat and mouse game ensues, but it’s not just between the Coker family and Nellie Coker. More plot lines appear in the story and wrap themselves tightly around each other. There’s librarian Gwendolyn, new to London looking for missing girls. There’s the mysterious people after Nellie and her empire. And then there are Nellie’s children themselves. Atkinson has done an admirable job stringing a compelling story together with at least 10 main characters and multiple plot points, something I am sure is incredibly difficult to do.

This is a marvelous book by Kate Atkinson. Set in the Jazz era in London Atkinson weaves an atmospheric tale of loyalty, betrayal, love and corruption. The characters are vivid as is the scenery. I thoroughly enjoyed this book!

Kate Atkinson is a wonderfully talented writer, and I really enjoyed her work set in WW2. However this book, though entertaining, did not sing to me the way her previous books have. The backdrop of the 1920s nightclub scene was fun but the policemen, the runaways, and the hookers were just gritty and added unnecessary layers to the story.

This is another great read from a great author! Maybe a few too many characters for me to follow but Ms. Atkinson tells a great story of an interesting time of history.

I love a good historical fiction, especially when the author can re-create an era. This certainly isn’t a perfect novel, but it was mostly a fun listen while I commuted.

Unfortunately, most of the characters weren’t very likable,
(especially the Coker clan) and the tiny sparks of romance or deeper relations were never developed. A lot of the plot/drama is suddenly forced in about 85% of the way through and felt rushed and contrived. Thus, a lot of the actual story falls flat.

There is a “mystery” that propels much of the story line, but it was pushed to the background until the very end, in a throw away wrap up.

That said, I think Gwendolyn Kelling is ripe for a spin-off detective series of her own!

For some reason, I didn't find the book description particularly compelling, but I love Kate Atkinson and was hopeful. It far exceeded my expectations. What a delightful romp. Great characters, well-drawn, in whom it's worth investing. Well paced and lively. A completely enjoyable read.

Part historical fiction, part crime and mystery, Atkinson’s book is well written and well worth reading. Set in London in 1926, a postwar fervor is reflected in the night clubs owned by Nellie Coker. Nellie and her three daughters and two sons run the clubs, which often host gangsters and are protected by crooked cops. When a detective, Frobisher, enlists the aid of Gwendelon, a former librarian, to infiltrate the club, a spate of murders ensue. I really enjoyed the time period and the main character Gwen, a confident and strong female character. Highly recommended. Thanks to NetGalley for the ARC.

Kate Atkinson never fails to entertain or write an interesting story, and this book is no different! She has written many novels, but I believe this one might be her best yet! This book is a excellently researched, and it is clear, as always, that Ms. Atkinson is a scrupulous historian and a keen wit and has a diabolical ability to write interesting, unique, 3-D characters. Wonderful, captivating writing and original, fascsinating plot gives this novel the depth and ability to pull in any reader. I highly recommend this author and all of her other books I have read have been nothing less than fantastic. She is definitely an auto-buy author for me, and I can't wait to own this novel in print.

This is one you need to read in one or two sittings, like some of Atkinson’s other works. There are lots of details you’ll miss otherwise. I know I missed some, but it was a pleasant read so at some point I’ll go back and read it again.

Kate Atkinson has just never let me down. While this one isn't stuffed with plot, the way she weaves and loops her stories back and forth makes for reading that is never dull. Interesting characters, a unique time and place, many real life facts and faces--all make this another entertaining and solid entry from Atkinson.

If you’re a fan of historical fiction, you might take Kate Atkinson’s latest for a spin. It’s outstanding. Set in 1920s London, Shrines of Gaiety is aswarm with the playful, oh-so-familiar devices of popular storytelling, and Atkinson lays them on thick: confused identities, narrowly missed encounters, and fateful intersections of happenstance and luck.

These authorial shenanigans support a narrative voice that’s distinct from the Scottish novelist’s earlier work; it’s a stylistic departure slick with misdirection and sly reversals of expectation. These strokes enrich, rather than distract from, Atkinson’s neatly wrought storyline. Gaiety’s plot — spurred on by a Middlemarchian tapestry of characters — canters on relentlessly, a throwback to Victorian models. Throughout, Atkinson layers in more than enough killings, betrayals, and gritty atmospheric vignettes to thrill any but the most dogmatic among the just-describe-what-happens-next crowd.

A trio of formidable women dominates the cast. Nellie Coker is the shady impresario of five successful nightclubs and the mater familias for six blissfully self-absorbed offspring. The book opens on a raucous spectacle of the curious as Nellie is released from London’s Holloway Prison after a six-month stint for liquor-license violations.

The next principal we meet is Gwendolen Kelling, a plucky, get-it-done librarian and Atkinson’s upright heroine-in-waiting. Gwen, counter to type, has somewhere misplaced her virginity — and quite mysteriously so, as we never learn the details. She has descended on London to find two runaway teens from back home in York. The instigator of said escape is 15-year-old Freda Murgatroyd. A charmed innocent, Freda has outgrown her limited provincial franchise as a child actress and is determined to make her fortune as a dancer — or, better yet, an ingenue — in the West End.

Swirling about these three are Nellie’s adult, mostly empty-headed, children and a slew of policemen (both the good and the bad, the clever and the plodding). Also attendant: a horde of ominous ruffians, chorines, showmen, hookers, and Members of Parliament. Scores of these merit multiple chapters of their own as they cruise about London in pastimes linked to the main action of the story.

This approach makes significant demands on the book’s narrator, and Atkinson steps forward grandly here with a wondrously freewheeling approach. Her narrator regularly eases into a character’s consciousness and then gracefully out again, sometimes reporting dispassionately, sometimes hovering like an opinionated observer, and occasionally slipping in expository flashbacks:

“[Freda’s] mother, Gladys, once the chronicler of her daughter’s looks, had recently lost interest and transferred her energy into finding a new husband to sponsor her indolent life. Gladys had, in the past, exploited Freda’s looks for an income, but the investment was no longer paying off. ‘You’ve lost your bloom,’ she said to Freda. Freda frowned. She felt she still had a lot of blooming ahead of her.”

And then, of Nellie Coker’s middle daughters:

“Shirley and Betty…did most things together — they were ‘Irish twins,’ born in the same year, and although very different were also very alike, both possessing a preference for style over substance. (‘Substance,’ Shirley said, ‘led to the battlefield, style rarely so.’ ‘Perhaps a killing look,’ Betty said, pleased with herself. They considered themselves to be wits.)”

The novel is also richly strewn with marvelous stretches of description: a kitchen fire at one of Nellie’s clubs, a brawl and gunfire at another, Gwendolen’s visit to London’s primitive morgue, several muggings and murders, and the brutal strangling of Freda’s lookalike friend, among many, many others. It all makes for a captivating, crafty Jazz Age yarn that’s not to be missed. Shrines of Gaiety is one of the year’s best.

Gwendolen Kelling is a World War I nurse who, after her service, finds work in a library. She is asked by a friend, Cissy, to go to London to find Freda, Cissy's teenaged half-sister, who ran away to find fame on the West End stage. Gwendolen finds herself working undercover for the police to infiltrate the dancing establishments owed by the Coker family. The historical novel provides a good story about the Jazz Age in Soho, with its dirty cops, dance parlors, and drugs. The true humor in the novel is the running commentary on librarians. Kate Atkinson is to be commended for the dry humor and zingers she throws toward the profession. Absolutely hysterical.