by Kate Atkinson
This is the third book that I have read by this author. I enjoyed the first two, I found them quirky and unique but interesting.
This books is about a young British woman, Julie Armstrong, who is recruited to work for MI5. Initially she is only a transcriber. She listens in to conversations in the next room where a British agent, who is pretending to be a Nazi sympathizer, is meeting with Brits who are nazi sympathizers. They want to find out what the sympathizers know or are planning to do, at times they feed them false information.
There is a bit of intrigue within the various bosses at MI5, one of the superiors asks Julie if she has noticed anything suspicious about her immediate boss but she doesn't tell him anything. Her boss tells her that she shouldn't trust anyone.
Eventually she is recruited to be a spy, meeting with one of the key female nazi sympathizers. Her actions eventually result in that women and others being arrested.
At one point one of the sympathizers comes to her office/apartment and discovers what is going on. She and two other agents kill the woman and dispose of her body.
The book jumps around in time. It starts in 1981 with Julie being hit by car when she is crossing the street, then it goes to 1940 and at times to 1950. After the war Julie gets a job with the BBC. Other former agents are also working there. She is frightened when she gets an anonymous note saying she will pay for what she did. She also finds that once you have been a spy you cannot leave that behind.
She is asked to provide a safehouse for a Czech defector who seems to have some knowledge about the Russian nuclear weapons program. She and a fellow agent lose this man to unknown people. Her boss loses his job because it is found out that he is homosexual. He had proposed to her, probably to try to cover up his homosexuality.
One of the people who is after her is a foreign woman who was acting as a British Agent. The woman's dog was entrusted to Julie and her boss but while they both loved the dog and took care of it, it ran away from them them. Julie thought the woman had died in Germany but the woman reappears and several times attacks Julie for killing her dog. She is a bit deranged.
However, it does seem that other people are after her. When she tries to leave England there are people trying to stop her at the train station. Her former boss comes to her aid, getting her way paid on a freighter which takes her to Europe. She apparently settled in Italy and had a son from an liaison there. However, one day two men arrive at her door and take her back to England. She is never charged with anything so you have to wonder why they bothered to bring her back.
It was an interesting story but not as engaging as the other two I read.
Friday, 8 February 2019
Sunday, 3 February 2019
Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine
by Gail Honeyman
This is the first novel by a Scottish writer. It has been getting alot of positive press so I thought I would read it.
It is about a young woman who is very lonely and isolated. She is the survivor of a traumatic event in her childhood that saw her moved from foster home to foster home and group home to group home. She was not maltreated there but she was not loved. Once a week Eleanor receives a phone call from her mother who keeps berating and threatening her. She dreads these calls.
She is working in a a job as an accounts clerk, she has no life, she works then comes home to the same meal every night and drinks herself into oblivion on weekends with vodka.
She doesn't think life can get any better, she lives in a suite provided to her by the state, furnished with other people's cast offs but she doesn't seem to care. She is stockpiling pain killers.
Eleanor is disfigured by burns on her face from a fire. She sticks to herself and her workmates find her strange and aloof. However, a tech guy in the company befriends her and invites her for coffee, to meet his mother etc. One day they are out walking and they find a man collapsed on the street. Eleanor talks to the unconscious man while they are awaiting help. The man survives and Eleanor and Raymond go to visit him in the hospital. The patient is grateful to them and welcomes them warmly. They are introduced to his family. As Eleanor has these interactions she starts to see what a family is like. This is an eye-opener to her. She doesn't have a frame of reference for a healthy family.
Eleanor is at a club and sees the lead singer of a band, she falls head over heels for him and starts to imagine that they will get into a relationship. She buys a computer so she can track him on the web, she buys new clothes, gets a new hairdo and even gets her face done and buys makeup so she can be presentable to to the man she hopes will be her beau. She even visits where he lives.
Sadly, the man that Eleanor and Raymond saved dies a few weeks later. They are both very sad at his death.
Eleanor buys tickets for a concert by the man she has been stalking. She dresses up in her new clothes. As the concert progresses she realizes that the musician will never really see her or be attracted to her. She chastises herself for being a thirty something women with a teenage crush. She goes home and drinks herself into oblivion. She would probably have died but Raymond arrives at her home, cleans up the mess she has made and brings her food and flowers. He insists she see a doctor who diagnoses her with clinical depression. He offers her drugs but she declines. He insists she see a counsellor and she agrees to do this. She is off work for a few weeks to recuperate.
As she goes to therapist she gradually opens up about the trauma she has suffered. As a child she and her sister had a nutcase of a mother. The Mother keeps telling them they are better than other people and insists they speak well and dress well. But while she lectures them at times she beats them and starves them. When teacher's notice the bruises on the children the mother pulls them out of school.
One day the mother sets fire to their home, planning to kill the two children. Eleanor's young sister dies in the fire. Eleanor finally remembers her sister and admits that she feels guilty that she was not able to protect and save her sister. The therapist assures her this is not her fault. A surprise crops up however, we learn that Eleanor's sister AND mother died in the fire. So all these years Eleanor had been imagining the weekly phone calls from her mother.
As the book ends Eleanor has a friend, a cat and the people at work welcome her back warmly when she returns to work. It looks like Eleanor will be fine.
This was a very sad book at times. The author did an excellent job of portraying a very disfunctional, lonely and isolated human. She did a great job of showing the transformation of Eleanor from a person totally isolated from society to a person who is gradually growing and learning how to behave in society.
This is the first novel by a Scottish writer. It has been getting alot of positive press so I thought I would read it.
It is about a young woman who is very lonely and isolated. She is the survivor of a traumatic event in her childhood that saw her moved from foster home to foster home and group home to group home. She was not maltreated there but she was not loved. Once a week Eleanor receives a phone call from her mother who keeps berating and threatening her. She dreads these calls.
She is working in a a job as an accounts clerk, she has no life, she works then comes home to the same meal every night and drinks herself into oblivion on weekends with vodka.
She doesn't think life can get any better, she lives in a suite provided to her by the state, furnished with other people's cast offs but she doesn't seem to care. She is stockpiling pain killers.
Eleanor is disfigured by burns on her face from a fire. She sticks to herself and her workmates find her strange and aloof. However, a tech guy in the company befriends her and invites her for coffee, to meet his mother etc. One day they are out walking and they find a man collapsed on the street. Eleanor talks to the unconscious man while they are awaiting help. The man survives and Eleanor and Raymond go to visit him in the hospital. The patient is grateful to them and welcomes them warmly. They are introduced to his family. As Eleanor has these interactions she starts to see what a family is like. This is an eye-opener to her. She doesn't have a frame of reference for a healthy family.
Eleanor is at a club and sees the lead singer of a band, she falls head over heels for him and starts to imagine that they will get into a relationship. She buys a computer so she can track him on the web, she buys new clothes, gets a new hairdo and even gets her face done and buys makeup so she can be presentable to to the man she hopes will be her beau. She even visits where he lives.
Sadly, the man that Eleanor and Raymond saved dies a few weeks later. They are both very sad at his death.
Eleanor buys tickets for a concert by the man she has been stalking. She dresses up in her new clothes. As the concert progresses she realizes that the musician will never really see her or be attracted to her. She chastises herself for being a thirty something women with a teenage crush. She goes home and drinks herself into oblivion. She would probably have died but Raymond arrives at her home, cleans up the mess she has made and brings her food and flowers. He insists she see a doctor who diagnoses her with clinical depression. He offers her drugs but she declines. He insists she see a counsellor and she agrees to do this. She is off work for a few weeks to recuperate.
As she goes to therapist she gradually opens up about the trauma she has suffered. As a child she and her sister had a nutcase of a mother. The Mother keeps telling them they are better than other people and insists they speak well and dress well. But while she lectures them at times she beats them and starves them. When teacher's notice the bruises on the children the mother pulls them out of school.
One day the mother sets fire to their home, planning to kill the two children. Eleanor's young sister dies in the fire. Eleanor finally remembers her sister and admits that she feels guilty that she was not able to protect and save her sister. The therapist assures her this is not her fault. A surprise crops up however, we learn that Eleanor's sister AND mother died in the fire. So all these years Eleanor had been imagining the weekly phone calls from her mother.
As the book ends Eleanor has a friend, a cat and the people at work welcome her back warmly when she returns to work. It looks like Eleanor will be fine.
This was a very sad book at times. The author did an excellent job of portraying a very disfunctional, lonely and isolated human. She did a great job of showing the transformation of Eleanor from a person totally isolated from society to a person who is gradually growing and learning how to behave in society.
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