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.

Shrines of Gaiety - Penguin Books UK

There’s no real main character, though it should be Nellie Coker, who is based on Kate Meyrick, Queen of Nightclubs. She weaves a vast cast into an astonishing backdrop of glitter and grime and a story that both entertains and enlightens.Jaunty rollicking tone quickly became annoying, just more of the same chapter after chapter page after page …. The ending is a little anti-climactic after such a wonderful set up however this was not something that overly bothered me. You have to get up very early in the morning to catch her out and even then she’s probably two jumps ahead of you!

Shrines of Gaiety: The Sunday Times Bestseller, May 2023

Gwendolen is excellent,and I loved watching her take on the world, as does Freda in a different way. You don’t so much read it as surrender to it, and you sense—and share—the relish with which she creates such an attention-grabbing cast. Atkinson has perfected the comicwizardry that keeps us both airborne and immersed in her mosaic-like narratives.EXCERPT: A pair of cream-and-black Bentleys - one owned and one rented for effect - drew up and the Coker clan divided themselves between them and drove away, waving as if they were royalty.

Shrines of Gaiety,’ by Kate Atkinson - The New Book Review: ‘Shrines of Gaiety,’ by Kate Atkinson - The New

When a young Irish girl, Maud, died of an opium overdose, Nellie dealt with it by suggesting a couple of army chaps take her body to the river to dispose of her. A sprawling and sparkling tale set in London in 1926…Asmartly entertaining read that captures the excitement of Roaring 20s London. There are attempted sexual assaults and back alley abortions and sex workers and pickpockets and homophobia and suicide and plenty of cocaine, too.I admit I was sometimes confused about which young woman I was reading about, one of the girls or one of Nellie’s daughters. Even though the fact that I listened to the audiobook may have had a hand in it, I'm honestly not sure I would have grasped everything even if I had been reading it.