Human Croquet (Unabridged) [Audio Download]

Isobel lives with her geeky brother, Charles, father Gordon, step-mother Debbie and awful aunt Vinny in a large house in a small town. All are overshadowed by the disappearance of Isobel's mother, the exotic and dangerous Eliza, who oozed sex appeal wherever she went. When Isobel begins to experience time-shifts that see her jump to different periods in her family history, she begins to unravel the mystery of her mother's disappearance and in the process, discovers who she is herself.

There's much to admire in this novel, which begins with the very creation of the world and finishes with its destruction. Atkinson skillfully weaves in the family history of the Fairfax history through its legends and ups and downs before settling on Isobel and her strange kin. Set mainly in the 1960s there is much attention paid to period detail, notably within the language and references of the time, although Isobel somehow sounds a little too old and middle-aged to be truly convincing as a heroine.

Easily the strongest character is Eliza, with her bitchy comments and sensuous appeal, whose disappearance has cast a pall over the whole family and particularly her husband Gordan, who disappears to New Zealand to escape it, leaving his children in the care of his sister and mother. Vinny herself is an amusing and bitchy grotesque, blind as to her own limitations and bitter about the poor hand that life has dealt her. The novel is at its most fun when she is on the page.

Atkinson keeps a firm grip on her time-shifts and while some of the scenes are a little disorientating, she pulls them together at the end, which ironically was the part of the book that I had the biggest problem with. Without spoiling it, the final device that Atkinson uses to pull her strands together feels very cheap (akin to Bobby Ewing emerging from the shower) and spoilt the effect of the previous pages. Up until that point I'd found the book to be a real page turner and it's a shame that the ending felt like rather a cheat. Also disappointing was the recurring theme of sex abuse and incest, which became so repetitive towards the end that it almost felt as though Atkinson had run out of ideas.

Its hard to describe what this book is about other than a chunk of the life of an individual at a particular place in time. The herione of our tale is a teenage girl filled with self-doubt about herself and her looks with a strange bag of misfit friends, a brother who is obsessed with aliens and bizarre events and who lusts after the best looking boy in town. Her rather strange world is described in very simple language like an old fashioned fairy tale so we hear about her aunt vinny and her cats, the creepy lodger and her parents. The main thread of the book is how the disappearance of her mother haunts both herself and her brother and how they believe this has landed them in the frankly surrealist world they live in. There are also other characters in the pot, the great forest which once dominated the landscape of england and some of the major characters that lead to the creation of the town.

Throughout the book we hear the voice of the girl describing the events around her with an innocent eye, however, these chapters are interspersed with flashbacks during which we discover over time the truth behind all the characters past and present. Her father the ex-war hero, her mother who she sees as a beautiful elusive figure, her step-mother, her grandmother and so on. In doing so we receive a very different view which is far from innocent on the desires and weaknesses of the characters and a world a lot darker, more real and much more dirty than hers.

Some of the book is very funny, and the characterisations told in simple language very interesting but if you're looking for humour be aware that this is a typical english thing, a black comedy with some sad truths. It is a very different book, in its style and approach and certainly grips you with a desire to know the truth behind all the people you meet and I stayed up late at night reading away. Its probably not everyones cup of tea and I'm not sure I'd want to read lots of this type of writing but its unusual, funny and worth the investment for long plane rides and train rides.

Human Croquet is about a girl, Isobel Fairfax, who lives with her father who left her when she was eight(?) and then came back, seven years later, Vinny, who's her emotionless and grumpy aunt, her stepmother, Debbie, who's nearly the same age as her, and her alien-obsessed brother. Her mother disappeared little before her father left her and her brother.
Human Croquet is a wonderfully bizarre book, full of twists and fascinating, deep characters. It is confusing in a good way, and when I finished it, I just felt like reading it again to notice every single little detail that, if I'd been more clever, would've maybe given the ending away.
I'll have to start looking for Kate Atkinson's other books