Behind the scenes at the museum / Kate Atkinson; narrated by Susan Jameson. – [North Kingstown]: BBC Audiobooks America, 200810 sound discs (12 hrs., 20 min.) : digital ; 4 3/4 in.
Unabridged
Compact discs.
Whitbread Book of the Year. (1995)
ISBN: 9780792755067
1. Domestic fiction. 2. Historical fiction. 3. Women -- England -- Fiction. 4. Yorkshire (England) -- Fiction.
823.914
Four generations of a Yorkshire family narrated by the youngest member of the clan, the precocious Ruby Lennox, who begins her witty and near-omniscient narration as a freshly conceived zygote in 1951 and winds it up with the death of her mother in the 1990s. It’s a relief to know that Ruby’s still alive by the end of the books, because, as she points out, the members of her family have a strong tendency to leave life suddenly by means of explosions, war, automobile accidents, drowning, or just running off and never being heard from again. Then there’s an alcoholic gene in most of the men, which, while it doesn’t contribute to domestic happiness, keeps the plots churning.
Jameson has a perfect voice for Ruby and the rest of her Northern clan, and for the sharp humor of Atkinson’s prose. This is a wonderful book to hear.
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