CBR Bingo: Rec’d
Behind the Scenes at the Museum by Kate Atkinson was recommended to me in a comment on my very first review in 2020 by andtheIToldYouSos. I had reviewed Atkinson’s Case Histories and thought it was okay. But andtheIToldYouSos encouraged me to read more of Atkinson’s work, particularly mentioning Behind the Scenes at the Museum. And boy howdy, I’m glad I did, because I really liked it.
The book starts with maybe one of my all time favorite opening passages, told from the perspective of newly conceived Ruby, the main narrator:
“I exist! I am conceived to the chimes of midnight on the clock on the mantelpiece in the room across the hall. The clock once belonged to my great-grandmother (a woman called Alice) and its tired chime counts me into the world. I’m begun on the first stroke and finished on the last when my father rolls off my mother and is plunged into a dreamless sleep, thanks to the five pints of John Smith’s Best Bitter he has drunk in the Punch Bowl with his friends, Walter and Bernard Belling.”
Behind the Scenes at the Museum is a multi-generational story as told by Ruby Lennox, the aforementioned fetus who grows into a curious and funny girl. The story runs from before World War I until the 1990s. Ruby tells the stories of her great-grandmother, her grandmother, and her emotionally withholding mother Bunty. The story goes back and forth between time periods and generations.
I started the book thinking it was a mystery for some reason, so I went into it blind as to plot. Some time went by before I realized this wasn’t a mystery, but I became absorbed in the book and appreciated it on its own terms. The story is full of vibrant characters and humor, even though the family endures multiple tragedies. There’s a feeling of indomitable cheer behind Ruby’s perspective, even through her own trauma and her vague memories of something distressing in her history (so there is a bit of a mystery).
There is a slight thread of supernatural elements in the stories; the family ghosts are mostly in memory, but there are a few moments that suggest real spirits and other flights of fancy. Like many books about family histories, there is a sense of things passed on and collective memory. The family has many sharp edges, particularly focused on Ruby’s intemperate, cold mother Bunty. In Ruby’s time, the family is decidedly dysfunctional, given the strict demands of Bunty, lack of parental affection (with the occasional exception of the father), and significant secrets and tragedies repressed. Sibling support does exist, and those are some of the more stable relationships in the family, even though there are also sharp edges to navigate. There are dysfunctions that have been passed down from historical family dynamics, so there is a thread of continuity as the reader learns more about the family. Ruby thinks, “[T]he past is so crowded that sometimes it feels as if there’s no room for the living.”
My only mild criticism is the story doesn’t really hang on anything in particular, which can make it drag in places. Ruby is the conduit for the story, but I wouldn’t say the story was about her until much later in the book. It’s about the family in general, but to what end is a little vague. I was waiting for a clear central conflict, but it was more like a jenga of smaller conflicts, events, and anecdotes. It seems a book in the spirit of the first sentence—the family exists, and their story is enough to follow them. I did truly enjoy the book.