Juliet is in her early twenties when World War II starts, and like so many girls and women her age she finds herself working for MI5. This sounds more exciting than it is; mostly, Juliet types things. One day she is ordered to join a mission in a small flat in London, where an agent named Godfrey Tobey ingratiates himself with Nazi sympathisers.
I haven’t read the blurb at the back but I imagine it continues with something about Juliet not knowing what she’s getting into, entering the exciting world of spying, and the likes. That’s both true and not true. Yes, Juliet works as a spy, but the work is mostly surprisingly and disappointingly mundane.
It’s really hard for me to review this novel, both because it’s impossible to talk about the plot with any depth without giving it away, and because I’m not entirely sure how I feel about this book. Juliet is a funny main character in the sense that she’s smart, and has a dry sort of wit, a hankering for adventure in the world of pea soupers and tinned vegetables; we don’t begrudge her some adventure in the drabness of blackout London. The other characters all seem like a pastiche: the hard-drinking French lady spy who beds the opposition to extract information, the wealthy Nazi sympathiser who treats her staff with complete disdain, the rakish and very upper crusty MI5 manager. It’s no coincidence that Juliet keeps talking and thinking about the events in terms of theatre: that’s what it is to her. She freely quotes Shakespeare and ponders her life using stage directions. And because this is Atkinson, time jumps around freely: the novel starts and ends in the 1960s before taking us to the 40s and 50s, when Juliet finds herself about to become a spinster, working for the BBC schools department.
It’s definitely a well-written book: few people can manage to have as much depth and skill without losing readability, and Atkinson is a master at this. At the same time, the book feels rather lacklustre. There’s something frustrating about Juliet, who is generally perceptive yet manages to miss things that are entirely obvious to us as modern readers. She approaches the world through her sense of boredom and that doesn’t always make for the most engaging read. And Atkinson’s attempts at adding some twists at the end feel a little cheap, almost, and that’s not something I’m used to from this author. On the other hand, the novel is clever, well-structured, and rather than steering clear of clichés they are put on display, manipulated and gleefully toyed with.
Kate Atkinson is a gifted writer, and though this is not her best it‘s still very readable. The next Life After Life, though, this isn’t.