Kate Atkinson is undoubtedly one of the UK’s finest storytellers, whether she’s hitting us up with the latest in the Jackson Brodie series of murder/mysteries, or she’s dipping back into the 20th century for a historical novel. Her latest falls into the latter camp and sees foreign correspondent turned war reporter Harry Flynn trying to put the Second World War behind him—in particular his gruelling role in building the Thailand-Burma “Death Railway”—and make a new life for himself. To that end, he gets a job working on the 1951 Festival of Britain. Mooted as a celebration of the country’s creativity, grit and ingenuity, Flynn is just one of a huge number of people drafted in by the government to make it all click. It’s a slow-burning tale, but when Flynn steps out on a date with a French woman who is also working at the festival—and she is consequently never seen again—the plot soon thickens. Atkinson coats proceedings with an agreeable patina of farce that is an absolute hoot (Flynn’s dinner party from hell with Mitzi Blinkhorn, a cook modelled on Fanny Cradock, is one for the ages). Sure, a character or two meets a sticky end, but nothing ever feels tragic, Atkinson letting her sundry oddball and demi-monde-ish characters run riot across a switchbacking plot that grows increasingly compelling as dénouements are reached. There is peril, certainly, but it’s handled with a lightness of touch that, sadly, seems to elude the hapless Mitzi Blinkhorn. RM

Published by Doubleday