Behind the Scenes at the Museum
might have been a depressing book if it weren't for the ebullient voice
of Ruby Lennox, who narrates her own experience as well as the history
of three generations of her female ancestors.
Ruby's parents own a pet shop in York, England, and live with their
daughters above the shop. Bunty, Ruby's mother, is bitterly
disappointed with her philandering husband and dull life.
Oldest daughter Patricia is melancholy as a child and rebellious as a
teenager, and middle daughter Gillian is contrary and selfish. Ruby,
the youngest, who has to struggle to be noticed, observes their dysfunctional
interactions with dark humor and keen perception.
Besides recounting her own life from conception in 1951 to age 41,
Ruby is also the omniscient narrator of the "footnotes" that follow
each chapter. These go back a century and chronicle events surrounding
Bunty; her mother, Nell; and her maternal grandmother, Alice.
Constrained by expectations, circumstances, and the effects of two
world wars, the women marry unhappily. The family suffers the
disappearance of some of its members and more than the usual number of
tragedies.
Drifting beneath the family chaos is Ruby's sense that she's forgetting
something. She finally penetrates to the truth of a long-buried
devastating event for which she was wrongly blamed. At the end of
Bunty's life, Ruby, the long-lost Patricia, and their mother come
together, manifesting the ties that bind families even if, as Ruby
says, "it's not what I would call love."
Readers are advised to have a pencil and paper nearby to keep track of
the family tree in this first novel by Kate Atkinson, which won
England's Whitbread Book of the Year Award in 1995.
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