This novel wasn't as original as Life After Life, Atkinson's time-bending masterpiece, but it was so much fun to read. The focus on female spies in the British homefront felt fresh and true to the gender-limits of that time. Kate Atkinson is very good at portraying the subtle nuances of social class differences and how that shapes character and motives. Period details grounded the story in history without slowing the pace. The page-turner plot made the journey fly. On the train I listened to the audiobook so I could watch the matched view and then switched to the hardcover on the plane home. I read Transcription whilst visiting family in England over the holidays, and it was the perfect travel book. The narrative flips back and forth between the two time periods, building tension. A decade later Juliet is working for the BBC on children's radio programming when her murky past catches up with her. Her cohorts try to take advantage of her naivety, but clever Juliet has an agenda of her own. In 1940, eighteen-year-old Juliet Armstrong is recruited to spy on Nazi sympathizers in London. It is a triumphant work of fiction from one of this country's most exceptional writers.Transcription by Kate Atkinson (2018) is a feminist remix of John le Carré with a touch of P.G. Transcription is a work of rare depth and texture, a bravura modern novel of extraordinary power, wit and empathy. A bill of reckoning is due, and she finally begins to realize that there is no action without consequence. A different war is being fought now, on a different battleground, but Juliet finds herself once more under threat. Ten years later, now a producer at the BBC, Juliet is unexpectedly confronted by figures from her past. But after the war has ended, she presumes the events of those years have been relegated to the past for ever. Kate Atkinson’s new novel, Transcription, resembles le Carré’s fictiondespite being set during and just after the supposedly less-ambiguous conflict of the Second World Waras it feels its. Sent to an obscure department of MI5 tasked with monitoring the comings and goings of British Fascist sympathizers, she discovers the work to be by turns both tedious and terrifying. In 1940, eighteen-year old Juliet Armstrong is reluctantly recruited into the world of espionage. 'An unapologetic novel of ideas which is also wise, funny and paced like a thriller' Observer THE NO.1 SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER BY AWARD WINNER KATE ATKINSON

Transcription by kate atkinson review