Behind the Scenes at the Museum

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Overview

National Bestseller

Winner of the Whitbread Book of the Year

Kate Atkinson's dazzling debut novel is a deeply moving story of family heartbreak and happiness.

Ruby Lennox begins narrating her life at the moment of conception, and from there takes us on a whirlwind tour of the twentieth century as seen through the eyes of an English girl determined to learn about her family and its secrets.

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More About This Book

Overview

National Bestseller

Winner of the Whitbread Book of the Year

Kate Atkinson's dazzling debut novel is a deeply moving story of family heartbreak and happiness.

Ruby Lennox begins narrating her life at the moment of conception, and from there takes us on a whirlwind tour of the twentieth century as seen through the eyes of an English girl determined to learn about her family and its secrets.

Editorial Reviews

Fiction Digest
From the moment Ruby Lennox announces her own conception with the shout, "I exist!"—an event she attributes to the five pints of bitter her father drank—it is clear she won't leave anything out of the account of her Yorkshire family. She describes her great-grandmother's affair with a French photographer, her mother's dashed dreams of Hollywood glamor and her sister's unsuccessful attempt to upstage the queen of England. A first novel.
Synopsis copyright Fiction Digest
Megan Harlan

In her offbeat, playful, and often poignant first novel, the young British writer Kate Atkinson offers us the voice of a jubilant, irreverent narrator, Ruby Lennox, who at once celebrates and mercilessly skewers her middle-class English family. From the moment of her conception in York in 1951 (the novel is smartly launched with the exclamation, "I exist!"), Ruby casts a frank and omniscient eye on her disjointed clan, viewing with growing alarm her distant, philandering father George, her profoundly irritable mother Bunty, and her two emotionally overwhelmed sisters. Life for the Lennox clan revolves around the family petshop, the occasional tragedy (such as when the petshop burns down), and visits with a bevy of eccentric relatives. Atkinson, who has won the UK's prestigious Ian St. James Award for her short stories, seamlessly alternates this normal, workaday world with darker family secrets -- including an odd "feeling of something long forgotten" that will haunt Ruby throughout her life.

Through a series of lengthy "footnotes" that follow each chapter, Atkinson also recounts tales drawn from over a century of the family's history -- tracing the passage of oddities and flawed traits from one generation to the next. A few of these work as colorful snapshots, as when Ruby's great-grandmother runs away with a French magician, or when we learn that the Second World War, for Bunty, was not so much a matter of getting a husband as acquiring a personality. But the majority of the tales (such as the one in which her grandmother buys new boots after the Boer War), do little to illuminate the more compelling modern-day narrative. Worse still, they lack Ruby's clever voice. In the end, Atkinson is so successful in creating her wry, witty central character that any other perspective seems like a digression we don't want to follow. -- Salon

More Reviews (3) Fewer Reviews
Ben MacIntyre
"Remarkable...full of the grimness, grit, and grandeur of Yorkshire life...one of the funnies books to come out of Britain in years." -- The New York Times Book Review
Georgia Jones-Davis
"Stunning...out Copperfield's David Copperfield's....The power has such storytelling, a treasure chest bursting with the painful, pitiful, sad, always fascinating details of the most ordinary of lives." -- The Los Angeles Times
Hilary Mantel
"Delivers its jokes and tradgedies as efficiently as Dickens once delivered his, though Atkinson has a gameplan more sophisticated than Dickens....will dazzle readers for years to come." - The Long Review of Books

Product Details

  • ISBN-13: 9780312150600
  • Publisher: Picador
  • Publication date: 11/12/1999
  • Edition description: REV
  • Pages: 336
  • Sales rank: 89,251
  • Product dimensions: 5.51 (w) x 8.26 (h) x 0.88 (d)

Meet the Author

Kate Atkinson
Kate Atkinson

Kate Atkinson is the author of a short-story collection, Not the End of the World, and five critically acclaimed novels including Case Histories and One Good Turn. She lives in Edinburgh, England.

Reading Group Guide

1. What do cupboards have to do with the story?

2. More than one reviewer compared Behind the Scenes at the Museum to Tristram Shandy and to the works of Marcel Proust and Charles Dickens.

3. What might these novels have in common? How does Kate Atkinson update or expand upon the earlier books' use of narration and history?

4. One of Atkinson's innovations is her use of footnotes. Why do you think she adopted this non-fiction technique in a novel?

5. Although this novel is very much about a specific time and place, it has been embraced by audiences in twelve countries, in as many languages.

6. What gives Behind the Scenes at the Museum such a universal appeal?

7. What is the meaning of the book's title?

8. What other fictional narrators does Ruby Lennox bring to mind?

9. What does Behind the Scenes at the Museum say about women's roles and opportunities in the family and in the world at large?

10. What do the four generations of women in Ruby's family have in common?

11. Behind the Scenes at the Museum generated controversy in England when a critic called it "anti-family." How would you defend the book against this charge? What other novels, now considered classics, might have had to face this sort of accusation?

Kate Atkinson, in her own words:

How would you summarize Behind the Scenes at the Museum?

"Almost impossible to do (it has a very complex structure). It's the story of Ruby Lennox from birth to the age of 40, her family, and the secrets hidden in the family's story. It also contains flashbacks to other members of the family -- in the past -- and so builds up a story/family tree that spans four generations. It's about history, time, loss, coincidence, self-knowledge. (It's also about cupboards -- but no one seems to notice that!)"

What was the inspiration for your book?

"A photograph of my great-grandmother. The silver teaspoon (an event that really happened)."

Who are your favorite authors? What authors have most influenced your work?

"Anne Tyler, Jane Austen, Kurt Vonnegut, Alice Hoffman, Margaret Atwood, Henry James, Donald Barthelme, Robert Coover, F. Scott Fitzgerald. Most influential -- Jane Austen and Kurt Vonnegut."

What did you do before your novel was published?

"University tutor, legal secretary, welfare benefits administrator, home help, creative literature tutor, supervising home visit service to the homebound and elderly, chambermaid, community education tutor -- anything and everything!"

Customer Reviews

Average Rating 4
( 10 )

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Sort by: Showing all of 10 Customer Reviews

  • Anonymous

    Posted May 24, 2001

    The best book I've read in years!

    I read this book while I was studying abroad in England, and I was just blown away by how wonderful it was. I was laughing out loud from the first page on, and at times I was laughing and crying at the same time. Atkinson writes about the ordinary and the everyday, but with such skill that you get sucked right into Ruby's world and you don't leave until the last page. Trust me, I've read a lot of books, and this is one of the funniest, saddest, most well-written books I've ever read. You'll love it!

    3 out of 3 people found this review helpful.

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  • Posted December 21, 2010

    more from this reviewer

    Unique Read

    I started this book because it was a selection through a book club. I read some of the reviews and I was excited to get started on the book, however I was disappointed. I usually don't have problems getting through a book but I really, really had to force myself to finish this one. I put it aside a couple of times to read other selections but decided I had to finish this one. I had a very hard time following the multiple characters that were introduced in the footnote sections where the author flashes back in time to fill in the reader on the history of the family. Although I have read many books that go back and forth in time periods, this one really left me unsure of who was who and how they were related to the main character. I found most of the footnote sections were distracting and didn't help me to understand the current characters any better. The story started to be a bit more interesting to me from chapter 8 (last third of the book) to the end. I ended up skimming the footnote sections in the second third of the book rather than try to figure out how the characters were related. The only foot note sections that helped me understand the story were the ones in the last part of the book. Although it was an interesting and unique way to tell the story about Ruby, I struggled to get through it.

    1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.

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  • Anonymous

    Posted March 15, 2005

    Best Part of the Honeymoon

    I brought this book along on our honeymoon to Maui, and as great as the vacation was, this book was even better. I was actually depressed when it ended. A phenomenal writer, Kate Atkinson has a unique gift for character development and storytelling. I have been talking and thinking about this book since I read it in 2000, and have read everything else by the author since. This is what a novel should be.

    1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.

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  • Anonymous

    Posted January 17, 2005

    I love it!

    I adore this book, the plot and characters become so real as you read it, it's impossible not to get pulled in. This is the 2nd Whitbread winner that I've read, and I was definatley not disappointed!!!

    1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.

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  • Anonymous

    Posted January 23, 2003

    I loved this story!

    I could not put the book down. I cared about Ruby and what happened to her. What a family! So true to life in many cases. Unusual for me to laugh out loud but I did.

    1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.

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  • Anonymous

    Posted August 11, 2001

    Enjoyable!

    Over the summer I decided to read books by authors that combined humor with tragedy. I read so many books that are wonderful but depressive! Anyway, this book really fit the bill. In the beginning, Ruby describes her own birth. She begins to reveal her family history in an innocent sort of way. By the end of the book she is all grown up and an insightful young lady. The journey she takes you on is one that will leave an impression on you. This is perhaps one of my favorite books.

    1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.

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  • Anonymous

    Posted June 11, 2003

    excellent !!!!!!!

    COULDN'T PUT THIS BOOK DOWN. WHAT A NOVEL WAY TO TELL A STORY

    0 out of 1 people found this review helpful.

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  • Anonymous

    Posted March 17, 2010

    No text was provided for this review.

  • Anonymous

    Posted October 1, 2009

    No text was provided for this review.

  • Anonymous

    Posted October 27, 2008

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