Human Croquet: A Novel

After reading my third Kate Atkinson book (her second), it’s now official – Kate Atkinson is my new favorite author. These stories are so rich, so bizarre, so unique, so sad, and yet so hilarious. I found myself wanting to have a pencil and paper handy to jot down many of the humorous quips that seem to flow so effortlessly from her pen. Maybe next time.There are many similar elements between this book and her first, Scenes From a Museum. The story is undoubtedly “British”, features a multitude of characters, is told across multiple generations, and is not a particularly happy read. Actually, the story is a joy, it’s just the predicaments the characters are in are less than ideal.The story revolves around Isobel. She’s about seventeen, rather unattractive, and living sometime in the late 1950s. She lives with her brother Charles and her father Gordon in a house owned by Gordon’s mom, known mainly as “the widow”. Of course, by the time we’re introduced to these characters, “the widow” as already died. But, there are couple of other relatives in the house along with a border who is some sort of traveling salesman. Note there is no Mom. It seems Mom left the family many years ago when Isobel and Charles were very young. There is a step mother, however. Not that this really matters to the kids. Isobel doesn’t have too happy of an existence. The bulk of this story revolves around Isobel’s yearning for her mother. Who was she? Where is she now? Why did she leave us? Most of the grownups don’t care to talk about her mother. Her name is/was Eliza.What author Kate Atkinson does so well in her books, is she moves around in time so we know more of the “whole story”. We’re taken back to when Eliza and Gordon were married and “the widow” was still alive. It is often said that young marrieds shouldn’t live in their mother/mother-in-law’s house. This story is a perfect illustration as to why. So we see the young family along with all the trials and tribulations. We see how/why Eliza left. We’re not surprised. After Eliza leaves, Gordon (the dad) leaves as well. I won’t go into why, nor how, but it seems he might be gone for good as well. So young Isobel and Charles now live with “the widow” and their morbid Aunt Ginny. Talk about a miserable existence. This was the one area of the book where the humor, unfortunately, didn’t quite cover the sadness I was feeling for the children.“The widow” and Aunt Ginny aren’t fun people to be around. I remember one exchange:Eliza: Why don’t we ever have fun in this family?Ginny: “Fun” don’t get the wash done!The family in this story are actual descendants from a clan known as “The Fairfax” family. Author Kate Atkinson begins the book telling the long, sordid history of this clan from centuries ago. It seems as though this family is rather cursed. Not surprisingly, by the time we meet the modern day characters, the curse has not been lifted by any means.I only mention this because there are parts of the book where Isobel experiences strange, out-of-body, and time-travel episodes. They’re small, brief interludes, and we’re inclined to ask “Were these real? Or is Isobel losing her marbles?” There are even episodes where Isobel lives the same day over and over again a few times – each radically different, but each with less than desirable outcomes. Ultimately, the story is so well told that you don’t really care whether these events are real (i.e. existing in some parallel universe) or the result of a bizarre hallucination. I can see where many authors might seriously bumble episodes such as this, yet with Atkinson, everything runs very smoothly, and the fact that these events may or may not have happened is mostly irrelevant.On a final note, there actually is a game called Human Croquet. It’s mostly played like the standard game, only using humans instead of balls that are whacked through hoops, run into each other, and cause destinies to be unfurled in ways unexpected. This book, nor this author, is for everyone, but I imagine many, like myself, would simply love this story.

This was such an odd book. I started it a few months ago and had to put it aside as it simply didn’t engage me. Then, having finished another of Atkinson's books (When Will There Be Good News) and not wanting to move away from her writing, I picked this one up again, started from the beginning once more, and couldn't put it down.Ostensibly the story of Isobel Fairfax, a young British woman who at an early age, along with her unattractive younger brother, Charles, "loses" her mother. Unlike Charles, Isobel appears to have the ability to slip through time, back to the Elizabethan period, and thus her life becomes this peculiar negotiation of time, space and people. Though the novel has this magic realist/mystical element it’s also a coming-of-age-story, a tale of familial and suburban dysfunction, murder, disappearances, secrets and lies, and an exploration of the ties that bind and tear us apart. The novel takes the reader on a remarkable journey through Isobel's childhood, adolescence and that of her parents and forebears, exposing warts, flaws, mistakes, triumphs and tragedies.Capturing the essence of the 1960s as well as war-time London, the characteristics of class, neighborhoods and the passion and heartbreak of relationships of all kind, this pseudo and quite dark fairy-tale is remarkable. Moving, haunting, at times funny, always strange and yet familiar, the novel shifts points of view from first to third person and a cocky omniscient narrator who through Isobel also functions like a Greek chorus, or a Shakespearian player setting the scene and passing commentary upon what unfolds. The book plays with reader expectations, genre, the notion of secrets, and in doing so examines the minutiae of the everyday, and explores the adult world from a child's point of view and vice versa.All the world and time is Atkinson's stage, and this is certainly an ambitious and clever novel that offers alternative readings of not only scenes, but characters' interpretations of events. What the reader accepts is up to her or him, but nothing is predictable.The prose is simply lovely and some of the ideas expressed are timeless and erudite and have you reaching for a highlighter in order to recall them. This story won't appeal to everyone, and it’s very different in so many ways from Atkinson’s other books, but if you cast aside expectations and go for the ride, it's one you won't forget in a hurry.

I have read many of Kate Atkinson’s books and enjoyed them all. I became familiar with the author while watching the Jackson Brodie series on Masterpiece Mystery/Theatre. HUMAN CROQUET is my latest Kate Atkinson read.The story is a melancholy one and a bit confusing at times. The writing is very lyrical and dream-like. Atkinson’s unusual writing style mixes time travel and reality so that the present becomes a bit blurred. The chapters bounce back and forth from Beginning to Present to Past to Present to Past to Present to Maybe to Past and ending with Future and we shift in and out of events during these different time periods. It is a bit difficult to explain, hence the adjective ‘blurred’ being used a lot. HUMAN CROQUET is a ‘layering of plots’.Is the Widow or Aunt Vinny Gordon’s mother?Did the neighbor, Mr. Baxter, die by his own hand or his wife’s?Did Audrey’s baby die? or was she left at the Fairfax doorstep?How did the Widow die?No one ‘looked for’ Eliza (or Gordon) after they disappeared?I think I know the answers. But I read and reread a passage and am still a bit fuzzy with the details.I like the prologue - setting the tone for the area.I like the main character, Isobel Fairfax.I liked the ‘Lady Oak’ as a character, a sentinel or symbol of the history of the area.I liked the sense of place.I liked the surprise appearance of a young William Shakespeare as a tutor at the Elizabethan estate of the then Lord Fairfax.I liked the sense of ‘time shifting’ as opposed to outright time travel. This story is very subtle and multi-layered.All in all, I did enjoy the subtleties of this book and would recommend it and other titles by the author.

I love Kate Atkinsons' writing, and don't quite know how I managed to miss this one, but deferred gratification is good, and Human Croquet was a huge pleasure to discover. I'm not going to bang on about the plot which is excellent. Suffice to say that Kate Atkinson likes play around with time and reality and messes with ones head quite delightfully, and this book is no exception. The characters are very well drawn, you've met some of them and probably know some too. She has an acute eye for human frailty and strength, not to mention general weirdness and a touch of evil here and there. It's a great book, read it!

This novel is a mix of family saga, time-travel and coming of age. There is lots of Kate Atkinson energy and fun but the plot is confusing and I didn’t warm to any of the characters. The time-travel episodes feel added on. I waited a long time for it to take off but it never happened. This is a long way from Kate Atkinson’s best.

Notes for ‘Human Croquet by Kate AtkinsonIt was a book where it helped to be familiar with Atkinson’s style. It was written between Behind the scenes at the museum and Life after LifeAnd thematically the three novels follow each other and develop the underlying themes as they go. That is not to say that the novels are a trilogy, the characters are not the same. Not the same in the story sense, but they are the same in the sense of a representative type. Atkinson does not disappoint, as always, her characters are appalling , unlikeable people, horribly flawed. Characters just like us readers and the people with whom we come into contact every day. Characters that have dark thoughts and inexplicable corners of the mind where reality and imagination merge to form alternative realities.Human Croquet runs riot on the theme of alternative realities as a precursor to Life after Life and gives the protagonist a more active role in the ‘time skip’ and family history theme than she had in Behind the Scenes.I found it a more challenging read than both other novels, so a newcomer to Atkinson might be a bit confused and find it hard going, not to say unsatisfactory. One really has to ‘get’ Atkinson’s style to appreciate the finesse and genius of the writing. Sentence by sentence it is beautiful stand alone prose, sentences put together to make sense of a plot requires memory and analysis of the prose sentence by sentence. But it is worth the work. If one was expecting a novel of historical fiction or romance, forget it. The historical background is incidental to the themes of the psychological study of the time dimension, the horribly flawed human condition, predestination, abandonment, alienation and general futility of life. It is overtly brutal in some places, more subtly so in others which make these more disturbing.The imagery sometimes feels overdone, but on reflection, this is not so, it has many layers and levels that can easily be missed. The woods, the forest and the trees are the real story, the characters are the trees.Some may find the ending device unsatisfactory and a disappointment. At first I would have agreed with this, even let out and audible groan. However, on reading on to the concluding chapters I realised that I had missed the utter brilliance of the underlying imagery. So much so, I have gone back to the beginning to re-read, and in doing so, am amazed at the absolute jaw dropping integrity of the whole novel.These Atkinson novels are always worth a few reads to really appreciate the nuances and how it is all put together. While many readers would not think it worth the study, others will find them almost life changing, and many will even find some psychological reassurance.

The basic idea is unusual and imaginative and the writing is superb as usual. However, about 2/3 of the way through the plot started meandering and it became rather confusing. Is Isobel delusional, highly imaginative or dreaming? Which thread is true, if any?I also wasn't sure about the place of the darker side of sex in the memories of a naive 16 year old school girl.

Having read all of Kate Atkinson's other books I finally discovered this one, which somehow I'd overlooked before. This turned out to be very handy as you would probably need to be familiar with and enjoy her time-hopping time-changing style to get the flow of this complex tale. (Life After Life and A God in Ruins are up there on my all time faves list).I struggled a little with this one at first but once hooked and invested in the characters I thoroughly enjoyed this weird family saga. I would recommend it to any fan of this fantastic author and am very pleased I finally stumbled on it.