Shrines of Gaiety: The Sunday Times Bestseller, May 2023

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He enlists a forthright former nurse and country librarian turned amateur sleuth, Gwendolen Kelling, who becomes the book's unwitting heroine. Based on the life of Kate Mayrick, also known as “Night Club Queen”, and the nightlife of London in the 1920s, this book was an incredibly interesting and compelling read.

Shrines of Gaiety - Penguin Books UK

Atkinson simply has a magician’s ability to switch a readers’s moods within a few paragraphs, and as dark as her stories can get, within them always shines a beacon of humanity. The contrast is stark between the shiny dresses and silver sandals of the hostesses and the poverty in which they live, in tiny, dingy rooms. With a unique Dickensian flair, Kate Atkinson gives us a glimpse into a piece of that colorful history of the jazz age in 1920s London and told with her sardonic wit and sense of timing.

So, if you have issues keeping up when a book has a ton of POVs you should probably keep some notes of the different people. Not all policemen in this book are easily bought, although some are proficient in profiting from the nefarious dealings of the underworld. From the inimitable bestselling author, Kate Atkinson, a mesmerising novel set in the glittering world of Soho in the 1920s - a place of gangsters and showgirls, Bright Young Things and one remarkable woman. There is the war hardened sniper and his own man, Niven, the reliable book keeper Edith, the Cambridge educated if vacuous, Betty and Shirley, expected to marry into the aristocracy, the unrooted Ramsay with his pretensions of being a novelist, and the young Kitty.

Shrines of Gaiety By Kate Atkinson | Used | 9781804991053 Shrines of Gaiety By Kate Atkinson | Used | 9781804991053

There were a lot of great elements to the plot and there was even a crime aspect that I quite enjoyed. A] glittering foray into London’s post-WWI Soho…Atkinson’s incisive prose and byzantine narrative elegantly excavate the deceit, depravity, and destruction of Nellie’s world. There’s a certain joy in opening a Kate Atkinson novel—a feeling that every element matters and that each surprise will ultimately make perfect sense…Atkinson’s characters and their choices, curiosities and corruptions keep the story unfolding, making the resolution worth every second.

Atkinson]takes on London in the 1920s, masterfully capturing both its shimmer and its seediness…It’s a deliciously fun, absorbing read. The wonder – as the noose tightens – is the suppleness that enables Atkinson to segue from scenes of pitch-dark horror to a brisk “what everyone did next” coda without sugar-coating the tale’s bitter kernel: it’s a peak performance of consummate control. There are good cops and bad cops; poor girls and rich girls; good girls and bad girls; lost girls and found girls as well as an array of petty thieves and criminals. The whole book was great in detail and description, but once the conclusion came, it was done in a matter of a few short chapters. Atkinson likes to move you forwards and then backwards, but it's all done with a firm hand making sure you get all the bits you need to know.