Behind The Scenes At The Museum
Play sample
  • Published: 1 May 2010
  • ISBN: 9781409094555
  • Imprint: Transworld Digital
  • Format: EBook
  • Pages: 496

Behind The Scenes At The Museum

Formats & editions
Paperback
3 Mar 2020
EBook
1 May 2010
Audiobook
20 Nov 2014
Audiobook
3 Dec 2009
Buy from…
Amazon Apple Books Google Play Kobo Booktopia eBooks.com

To celebrate the 25th anniversary since first publication, a new edition of Kate Atkinson’s brilliant and unforgettable first novel with an introduction by the author.

The unforgettable, award-winning debut novel and modern classic from the Sunday Times bestselling author of Life After Life and Shrines of Gaiety.

'Delivers its jokes and its tragedies as efficiently as Dickens...outrageously funny...will dazzle readers for years to come' - HILARY MANTEL, bestselling author of Wolf Hall

Ruby Lennox was conceived grudgingly by Bunty and born while her father, George, was in the Dog and Hare in Doncaster telling a woman in an emerald dress and a D-cup that he wasn't married.

Bunty had never wanted to marry George, but here she was, stuck in a flat above the pet shop in an ancient street beneath York Minster, with her children - sensible and sardonic Patricia aged five, greedy cross-patch Gillian who refused to be ignored, and Ruby...

In Behind the Scenes at the Museum, young Ruby tells the story of ‘The Family’, from the end of the nineteenth century when a travelling French photographer catches frail beautiful Alice and her children, to the startling, witty, and memorable events of Ruby's own life.

Praise for Behind the Scenes at the Museum, winner of the Whitbread Book of the Year:

'An astounding book...without doubt one of the finest novels I have read for years' The Times

'Little short of a masterpiece...Fizzing with wit and energy, Kate Atkinson's hilarious novel made me laugh and cry' Daily Mail

‘A really gripping, emotionally satisfying family saga written with warmth and wit. I've re-read it countless times.’ Red

‘A debut novel of astonishing confidence and skill...Acutely observant, overflowing with good jokes, it is the work of an author who loves her characters and sets them playing with gleeful energy’ Spectator

‘Written so fluently and wittily that I sailed through it as though blown by an exhilarating wind… It lifted my spirits enormously. I loved it.’ Margaret Forster
  • Published: 1 May 2010
  • ISBN: 9781409094555
  • Imprint: Transworld Digital
  • Format: EBook
  • Pages: 496
Categories:

About the author

Kate Atkinson

Kate Atkinson is one of the world’s foremost novelists. She won the Costa Book of the Year prize with her first novel, Behind the Scenes at the Museum. Her three critically lauded and prizewinning novels set around World War II are Life After Life, A God in Ruins (both winners of the Costa Novel Award), and Transcription. She was appointed MBE for services to literature in 2011.

Her bestselling literary crime novels featuring former detective Jackson Brodie, Case Histories, One Good Turn, When Will There Be Good News? and Started Early, Took My Dog became a BBC television series starring Jason Isaacs. Jackson Brodie returns in her new novel Big Sky.

portrait photo of Kate Atkinson

Also by Kate Atkinson

Death at the Sign of the Rook
Life After Life
Normal Rules Don't Apply
Not The End Of The World
Shrines of Gaiety
Emotionally Weird
Transcription
See all

Praise for Behind The Scenes At The Museum

A blinding debut from a Yorkshire mother-of-two who could be Alan Bennett's baby sister...straight-up simplicity veils the depth, poignancy and poetry of her story

Time Out

A debut novel of astonishing confidence and skill...Acutely observant, overflowing with good jokes, it is the work of an author who loves her characters and sets them playing with gleeful energy

Spectator

A first novel written so fluently and wittily that I sailed through it as though blown by an exhilarating wind; a first novel with a touch so light I only felt its truth and sadness after I'd finished it. It lifted my spirits enormously. I loved it.

Margaret Forster

A really gripping, emotionally satisfying family saga written with warmth and wit. I've re-read it countless times.

Red

An astounding book...without doubt one of the finest novels I have read for years

The Times

Delivers its jokes and its tragedies as efficiently as Dickens...outrageously funny on almost every page...will dazzle readers for years to come.

Hilary Mantel, London Review of Books

Enchanting. It hops with sprightly omniscence from past to future and back again

The Sunday Times

Little short of a masterpiece...Fizzing with wit and energy, Kate Atkinson's hilarious novel made me laugh and cry

Daily Mail