Shrines of Gaiety: The Sunday Times Bestseller, May 2023

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Set during Jazz Age London, in all its fizzy madness and desperation…. As dark as [Atkinson’s] stories can get, within them always shines a beacon of humanity.” —Gillian Flynn, bestselling author of Dark Places

Shrines of Gaiety by Kate Atkinson | Waterstones

In a country still recovering from the Great War, London is the focus for a delirious nightlife. In Soho clubs, peers of the realm rub shoulders with starlets, foreign dignitaries with gangsters, and girls sell dances for a shilling a time. THE AUTHOR: Kate Atkinson was born in York and now lives in Edinburgh. Her first novel, Behind the Scenes at the Museum, won the Whitbread Book of the Year Award and she has been a critically acclaimed international bestselling author ever since.Ramsay, Nellie’s second son, was made to relieve his mother of the burden of the bouquet and was caught by the photographer holding the flowers like a blushing bride. To the annoyance of his sisters (and himself too), this would turn out to be the photograph that graced the newspaper the next morning, beneath the heading Son of notorious Soho nightclub proprietor Nellie Coker greets his mother on her release from prison. Ramsay hoped for fame for himself, not as an adjunct of his mother’s celebrity. He started to sneeze in response to the flowers, a rapid volley of atishoo-atishoo-atishoo, and the newspaper delivery boy heard Nellie say, “Oh, for heaven’s sake, Ramsay, pull yourself together,” which was the kind of thing the boy’s own mother said. Is it? A hanging?” he persisted, tugging at the sleeve of the nearest toff—a big, flushed man with an acrid cigar plugged in his mouth and an open bottle of champagne in his hand. The boy supposed that the man must have begun the evening in pristine condition, but now the stiff white front of his waistcoat was stained with little dots and splashes of food and the shiny patent of his shoes had a smattering of vomit. A red carnation, wilted by the night’s excesses, drooped from his buttonhole. At the Amethyst, Freddie Bassett, the head barman, presented another oversized floral offering to Nellie. “Welcome home, Mrs. Coker,” he said. No “Nellie” for him, he never cheapened himself by being anything less than formal with the family. He had his standards. He had trained at the Ritz before losing his post there due to an unfortunate incident involving two chambermaids and a linen cupboard. “You can imagine the rest,” he said to Nellie when he applied for the job at the Amethyst. “I’d rather not,” she said.

Shrines of Gaiety by Kate Atkinson | Waterstones Shrines of Gaiety by Kate Atkinson | Waterstones

In Soho, London, Nellie Coker is queen of all she surveys - successful owner of a string of nightclubs, she’s a ruthless character - knows what she wants, and also gets what she wants! She’s extremely shrewd, has a good business head, and is determined and ambitious enough to want the best education that money can buy for her six children - her nightclubs provide the means for those ambitions. Kate Atkinson is simply one of the best writers working today, anywhere in the world...she's a global treasure... [Shrines] is set during Jazz Age London, in all its fizzy madness and desperation for the new, the better, the hustle. Atkinson has a magician's ability to switch a reader's mood within a few paragraphs, and as dark as her stories can get, within them always shines a beacon of humanity. GILLIAN FLYNN Nellie disliked flowers, considering them to be too needy. They should be reserved for weddings and funerals in her opinion, and not her own, thank you very much. Nellie wished to leave the world unadorned, as she had entered it, with not so much as a daisy. This time Atkinson takes us to London in 1926, principally to the night life and the exotic clubs where the very rich, the powerful and criminals mixed as one. We meet Nellie Coker, just out of prison, who owns five of these night clubs all of them set up with the proceeds of crime. She is an amazing character.

Whilst not containing a maternal bone in her body, Nellie will do whatever she can to ensure the survival and elevation of her 6 children. There is the war hardened sniper and his own man, Niven, the reliable book keeper Edith, the Cambridge educated if vacuous, Betty and Shirley, expected to marry into the aristocracy, the unrooted Ramsay with his pretensions of being a novelist, and the young Kitty. Upon being released from a stint in Holloway Prison, Nellie is the toast of the town, but some sense weakness, making plans to grab her business empire, willing to do anything to hasten her downfall, others pose a danger to her family, and some threats come from within. But Nellie is no pushover, she might be getting older, but she has not lost her guile and cunning. The honest DCI John Frobisher wants to ensure Ma Coker faces justice, and recruits an unlikely spy, a provincial librarian and ex-battlefield nurse, Gwendolen Kelling, with her charismatic spirit of adventure, to help him. She is in London to finally live a life, and to find the runaway girls, Freda, chasing her pipe dreams of dancing and fame, and her naive and more innocent friend, Florence. The storyline is entertaining. I gave up trying to figure out where Atkinson was taking me (I should know better by now) and just went along for the ride. And what a ride! Several things about the ending surprised me, but perhaps shouldn't have. Not everything is neatly tied up at the end and Atkinson makes it quite clear that she has done this deliberately. of what I read in Shrines was useless to the plot. Many of the (parenthesis) was an “explanation” to the reader of what was previous stated with obvious intention. I don’t need an aside to explain why words were designated with a Capital Letter (the Knits anyone?).