The (often opportunistic) nature of memory is a central theme.

Individual memory is continually altering collective memory. What Atkinson does is to lay down first the mythology – often created by parents who don’t want their children to know certain shameful truths – and then slowly peel off that outer crust. Because the writer has failed utterly to imaginatively penetrate the various anecdotes that have come to (erroneously) define Bloomsbury – so we have Virginia Woolf as some dessicated twittering bundle of nerves who’s frigid and socially barely able to string a coherent sentence together. It’s one reason why the series is so wooden and bloodless. The series currently on TV about Bloomsbury is an example of taking mythology at face value and presenting it as the whole truth. That these anecdotes are often a form of deliberate mystification or downright evasive lies on the part of one individual we all know (or suspect) from our own families. All families have their mythologies – anecdotes or opportunistic fabrications that play the historian’s role in simplifying and sanitising the official story. You could though say it’s a gradual debunking of family mythology to find deeper more consequential truths. On the surface it’s a tragi-comedy, a family saga, primarily narrated by Ruby Lennox, born in the 1950s. It covers four generations of a family – from WW1 almost to the present day. There’s also an awful lot to remember because for some time it isn’t obvious which details or even characters are paramount and which stuffing. The narrative is a labyrinth of twists and turns, false trails, loops and double helixes. 'As a family, we are genetically disposed towards having accidents.'įirst and foremost, this is a challenging ambitious book, more so than Life after Life.

Kate atkinson museum