The Book: Harry Flynn came back from World War II a broken man. As a young journalist he was captured in Singapore by the Japanese and, as a prisoner of war, he was put to work building the infamous Burma-Thailand railroad, a project that killed thousands of prisoners of war (for background you might watch The Bridge Over the River Kwai). Harry makes it back alive although he was listed as Missing, Presumed Dead. Life seems hopeless. “It wasn’t that he wanted to be dead, he simply couldn’t be bothered with the tiresome business of being alive. It seemed ironic, having spent the last three years struggling to do just that.” But then he realized he’d “been given back his life and he was going to have to live it, whether he liked it or not.” As the novel starts it is 1949 and Harry has left an ill advised suburban marriage (complete with a step-daughter named Veronica and a little dog named Mrs. Betty) and is working at a dead end job. Then one day he is approached by his old boss and asked to work on The Festival of Britain, a national festival with exhibitions to be held in 1951 and to be built from scratch on the south bank of the Thames. He agrees although he doesn't really have a job description. He's there to "take up some slack" and to compile a poetry anthology. Turn the page and it is now 1951 and the festival is on the verge of opening. It turns out that Harry works in a small office in Savoy Court and every part of the festival having to do with the display rooms, including the sourcing of materials, comes through his office. Harry works with two other men, both are veterans and none of them like to talk about what they did in the War. There is also an errand boy (known as The Boy) who they all take under their wing. The job has been good for Harry, he is starting to feel more alive. All is going well until the night he is asked to meet a young French woman for a drink. The next morning Harry can't remember what happened after the woman left him at the pub but the woman is missing and many people seem to suspect that Harry killed her. And on top of all that, Veronica and Mrs. Betty show up on his doorstep.
The Author: Kate Atkinson
Genre: Historical Mystery
Length: 504 pp. (e-reader, ipad mini)
One good thing: I knew nothing about The Festival of Britain before reading this book. As usual Kate Atkinson has done stellar research and incorporated it into the plot, most often in incredibly humorous ways. I was fascinated.
One not-so-great thing: It takes a while for the “mystery” plot to get going and it all gets “solved” or tied up a little too easily for my taste. But that often happens in these type of “ordinary man caught up in strange circumstances” stories.
Four Doorways: Story; Characters; Setting; Language****
Although my summary makes this sound like a ordinary thriller, Kate Atkinson doesn't write ordinary thrillers. In fact the mystery plot seems secondary to the rest of the novel and truthfully gets wrapped up too easily. If you are looking for a plot driven book that takes off from the beginning, this might not be for you. But if you are ready for a slow build, it does eventually get going. There are points when a reader must wonder how she is going to draw the threads of the story together into a reasonable ending. How does the contest for a Festival Cake fit into the plot? What about the young women who are supposed to roam around the festival grounds selling Oranges?
But in the end the plot isn't really the point; it is the characters and the setting that draw the reader in. Atkinson’s strong point is always her characters. As usual, Atkinson introduces a plethora of quirky characters in quirky situations, each character completely fleshed out so that all of their strange tics and flaws (and they have many) seem perfectly natural. Be warned, Harry’s back story is very sad and even though Atkinson doesn’t dwell on the details of Harry’s time in the prisoner of war camp, it permeates the novel. Since it takes a good long while for the plot to get going, readers may feel the novel is too dark despite the humor strewn throughout. (It does get lighter once the mystery plot builds up.)
For those who love a good setting, her descriptions of the festival grounds made me wish I could have seen it. (To help things along she includes insets from plans of the festival grounds before each chapter. I kept thinking that Walt Disney had similar ideas when he created Epcot). It is clear that Atkinson did a ton of research into the festival but I did not feel she let the research overwhelm her plot. On the other hand if you have little patience for minutiae, you may grow tired of the descriptions.
Atkinson is one of my favorite writers. Although this novel doesn't begin to approach the brilliance of Life After Life, it is enjoyable and she does create a believable character in Harry Flynn, a man who went through hell in the War and sometimes is just hanging on by a thread. By the way, the title is taken from a toast made by the Army on Wednesdays: To our Noble Selves.
****"It seems to me that all works of fiction and narrative nonfiction are broadly made up of four experiential elements: story, character, setting, and language. I call these “doorways,” because when we open a book, read the first few pages, and choose to go on, we enter the world of that book. And I’ve come to believe we can help readers better choose their next book by looking at the proportion of these four elements." Nancy Pearl on the Four Doorways.
