Transcription

A Novel

By: Kate Atkinson

Narrated by: Fenella Woolgar

A Penguin Book Club pick

From the best-selling author of Life After Life, a new novel that explores the repercussions of one young woman's espionage work during World War II.

In 1940, 18-year-old Juliet Armstrong is reluctantly recruited into the world of espionage. Sent to an obscure department of MI5 tasked with monitoring the comings and goings of British Fascist sympathizers, she discovers the work to be by turns tedious and terrifying. But after the war has ended, she presumes the events of those years have been relegated to the past forever.

Ten years later, now a radio producer at the BBC, Juliet is unexpectedly confronted by figures from her past. A different war is being fought now, on a different battleground, but Juliet finds herself once more under threat. A bill of reckoning is due, and she finally begins to realize that there is no action without consequence.

Transcription is a work of rare depth and texture, a bravura modern novel of extraordinary power, wit, and empathy. It is a triumphant work of fiction from one of the best writers of our time.

©2016 Kate Atkinson (P)2018 Bond Street Books

Critic reviews

"[A] superb story of wartime espionage.... Hilary Mantel once said of Atkinson's ground-breaking first novel, Behind the Scenes at the Museum, that she had a 'game-plan more sophisticated than Dickens,' and that skill is more than evident in this latest offering.... Remarkable.... The sheer bravura of Atkinson's storytelling is such that you will find it impossible not to want to revisit those clues so cleverly placed, as you shake your head in disbelief at how effortlessly you have been taken in." (The Times Literary Supplement)

"[Transcription] never loses its sense of absurdity of human beings even in their most tragic or noble moments.... How vehemently most novelists will wish to produce a masterpiece as good." (The Daily Telegraph, UK)

"[Transcription] is a major event.... Atkinson loves her research, but she doesn't need much help concocting original stories that resemble no one else's and take the breath away." (The New York Times)

Action missing

The story was slow and, at times, rambling. Performance was good but fell asleep several times with the pace.