Product Description

What is the real world? Does it exist, or is it merely a means of keeping another reality at bay? "Not the End of the World" is Kate Atkinson's first collection of short stories. Playful and profound, they explore the world we think we know whilst offering a vision of another world which lurks just beneath the surface of our consciousness, a world where the myths we have banished from our lives are startlingly present and where imagination has the power to transform reality. From Charlene and Trudi, obsessively making lists while bombs explode softly in the streets outside, to gormless Eddie, maniacal cataloguer of fish, and Meredith Zane who may just have discovered the secret to eternal life, each of these stories shows that when the worlds of material existence and imagination collide, anything is possible.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #26142 in Books
• Published on: 2006-08-02
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 336 pages

The Sunday Times
‘Moving and funny, and crammed with incidental wisdom’

Daily Mail
‘Exceptional…Sharp, witty and completely compelling'

Independent on Sunday
'An exceptionally funny, quirky and bold writer'

Customer Reviews

marvellous, intriguing short stories
Kate Atkinson is one of the most daring, intelligent and gifted women writers around, but after her remarkable debut, Behind the Scenes at the Museum, she veered a bit too far into post-modernism for me. With this collection of 12 interlinked short stories inspired by Greek myths, Buffy the Vampire Slayer and the Apocalyse she's not just back on form but better than ever. Yes it's still post-modern, but the playfulness and irony work as they didn't fully in Emotionally Weird. My favourite, Unseen Translation, is about the son of a ghastly pop-star who gets Artemis as his nanny. They made me laugh, shiver and cheer. Can't wait for the next novel.

Read it for the storytelling not the story
I have read much of Kate Atkinsons other stories and as with this book I found that the real pleasure to be had is in the telling rather than the story itself. Her language and sense of humour are wonderful, her metaphors and descriptions are original and stick in the mind long after you have finished reading them.

However the only drawback I would say is you do get the feeling often that she has come up with a wonderful idea for a story, started off writing, got halfway through and then not known how to finish it (and it was highlighted here in the short stories where presumably she had to get in, tell the story and get out again in as few pages as possible!!)

If you can suspend the need to have a neatly tied up ending and can just enjoy the way the story was told these short stories are an interesting way to pass a few minutes without demanding too much headspace to follow a plot and I would say go for this. If you hate stories that just hang at the end, or suddenly take a turn for the absurd then best opt for something else!

Mesmerising and beautiful
Each story in this strangely beautiful collection is set in its own alternative universe, all laced together by tenous links and threads. Each one holds its own suspension of reality, where the gods descend from Olympus, animals become humans and humans become cats, immortality is possible and nothing is quite as it seems. Kate Atkinson draws on everything from classical mythology to popular culture to produce a collection that sings with magic and humanity. Fantastically - terrifyingly - our own deepest hopes and fears are set in a world that allows them to come true.

Kate Atkinson's glorious prose (toned down somewhat from it's Behind the Scenes at the Museum zenith) nevertheless dances on every page, and it is sometimes simply enough to listen to the poetry of her words. Every story reads like a celebration of mystery, magic, human nature, humour, love, life and story-telling. A genuine pleasure to read.