Kate Atkinson returns with a Festival of Britain mystery
The Guardian reviews Our Noble Selves, a new novel from the author of Life After Life set amid the 1951 Festival of Britain.
The Guardian has published a review of Our Noble Selves, a new novel by Kate Atkinson, describing it as a "gentle noirish mystery" set around the Festival of Britain, the 1951 government-backed celebration of national creativity staged to lift a country still recovering from the war.
According to the review, the book follows Harry Flynn, a foreign correspondent who survived reporting from Burma, through the collapse of a marriage to a war widow named Ivy and a spell living with her, her young daughter Veronica and a terrier called Mrs Betty in a mock-Tudor house in Wealdstone. Flynn later returns to bachelor life in London, where a chance meeting with his former newspaper editor, Gerald Barry, leads to a commission compiling the poetry anthology for the Festival of Britain.
The Guardian's reviewer notes that the festival, framed in the novel as a celebration of "the Land and the People" and Britain's "love of country, love of freedom, love of nature, pride in craftsmanship", suits Atkinson's fondness for period eccentricity and telling detail. The review credits the novel with "glimpses of Atkinson's subtle brilliance", while characterising the overall tone as quirky, nostalgic evocation of postwar Britain rather than a departure from her established style, recognisable from Life After Life.
No French publication date or translated title has been mentioned in the material available.
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