Not the End of the World

Not the End of the World by Kate Atkinson

I’ve stated this in other reviews of this author’s work, but it bears repeating - Kate Atkinson is not for everyone.  This is true especially of this book.  This is a collection of short stories.  Stories that, in many cases, seem unfinished or without purpose.  Some are truly bizarre.  You will be scratching your head quite a bit as you finish these stories.  What was that all about?  You ask yourself.  Only at the end of the book do things start to slowly, finally, make sense.

Although you quite often feel disconnected, story wise, Atkinson’s main hook is her unique way with words.  So even though you’re not really sure where she’s going in many cases, she still manages to hook you in with her humorous, offbeat, yet somewhat depressing tales.  After reading five books by this author, I’m now convinced that she’ll never tell a happy story about happy people in any sort of happy situations.  This just isn’t her style.  Her main characters are quite often miserable in whatever existence they find themselves thrown in.  Most of the father figures and leading men are twits, and very few people in these pages believe in any sort of God, so they plod on day to day with sullen faces, hoping against hope that their fortunes will somehow miraculously turn.  Alas, they seldom ever do.

A major drawback to these short stories, ironically, is the fact that they all seem to end too quickly.  Every one of these stories seemed to suggest that, had the author wanted, she could have fleshed each of these tales out into a full novel.  One wishes she had.  See, even though the characters are quite downtrodden, Atkinson has such a humorous way of dealing with these characters that you tend to literally laugh out loud as you’re reading.

The short story bit was a nice idea, but I’m glad that she elected to go back to telling full length stories after this one was released.  If you’ve never read one of this author’s works, I implore you to start out with one of her full length books first (her first two were brilliant, I haven’t made may way around to reading most of the latter stuff).  If you truly enjoy her bizarre style, there’s a good chance you’ll like this quirky diversion she presents here.