An Enjoyable Romp

Marvellous the way Kate Atkinson moves a substantial cast of characters around like pieces on a chessboard. On slight unfortunate note is that it doesn't really end with a satisfying checkmate, it rather peters out into a series of postlude thumbnails of what happened after to the various characters.

Another stunning american social-realist novel

With three or four linked storylines (Taylor & Turtle as the main thread, Jax, Alice, Annawake, and Cash as a strong ensemble, and Barbie for comedic value) it keeps yoou reading as they get woven together. With a satisfyng and open-ended conclusion - what happens next? - and plenty of neat observation about relationships, gender and identity, age and youth, cultureand sub-cultures, alon the way.

Surprisingly shocking

Although we have heard the story - and in a sense always known it; the existence of police spies in activist groups is assumed to be true as a basic security princple - to read the first hand accounts of the way a selection of women were targetted and gaslit by undercover cops and the detail of their emotional involvement in a fake person was quite shocking.

The persoal become highly political, and in the context of what has happened since in terms of the drift into an authoritarian state pretty unsettling.