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Behind the Scenes at the Museum
Behind the Scenes at the Museum
Author: Kate Atkinson
Ruby Lennox begins narrating her own life at the moment of her conception, and from there takes the reader on a whirlwind tour of the twentieth century as seen through the eyes of a girl determined to learn more about her family and the secrets it keeps.
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ISBN-13: 9780312150600
ISBN-10: 0312150601
Publication Date: 1/1997
Pages: 333
Rating:
  • Currently 3.6/5 Stars.
 158

3.6 stars, based on 158 ratings
Publisher: Picador
Book Type: Paperback
Other Versions: Hardcover, Audio Cassette, Audio CD
Reviews: Member | Amazon | Write a Review

Top Member Book Reviews

reviewed Behind the Scenes at the Museum on + 29 more book reviews
Helpful Score: 12
Memorable. Surprises abound. Characters to really care about, to love, and to be appalled by! A true picture of growing up in the 50s, with an abundance of detailed domestic life. Certain passages stay with the reader, like: "I have been to the world's end and back and now I know what I would put in my bottom drawer. I would put my sisters." The bottom drawer, when you read the book, stands for a place for needful things.
reviewed Behind the Scenes at the Museum on + 166 more book reviews
Helpful Score: 10
A terrific book by hot British writer Kate Atkinson, author of "Case Histories." This one was a Whitbread Book of the Year, and on the NY Times "Notable Books of the Year" list.
Alternating between a first person account of the young life of Ruby Lennox, and a series of chapter-long 'footnotes' that give insight into the backstory of Ruby's extended family, the book is darkly comic, sometimes tragic, wise, and very original.
csa avatar reviewed Behind the Scenes at the Museum on + 45 more book reviews
Helpful Score: 6
A great look at a complex family. This is not your typical dysfunctional family story. This is a perfect book group discussion type book.
reviewed Behind the Scenes at the Museum on + 149 more book reviews
Helpful Score: 5
Totally engrossing story of the life of a girl that starts from the moment she is conceived. I found that once I started reading it, I could not lay it down until it was finished.
DJB avatar reviewed Behind the Scenes at the Museum on
Helpful Score: 4
I read to page 88 and had to abandon it. I just couldn't connect with any of the characters or the story itself. I liked the opening lines of the book, but it just wasn't fulfilling for me at all.
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reviewed Behind the Scenes at the Museum on + 188 more book reviews
Info on the book:
1995 Whitbread Book of the Year
In her profoundly moving, uniquely comic debut, Kate Atkinson introduces readers to the mind and world of Ruby Lennox, born above a pet shop in York at the halfway point of the twentieth century, and determined to understand both the family that precedes her adn the life that awaits her.
Taking her own conception as her starting point, the irrepressible Ruby narates a story of four generations of women, from her great-grandmother's affair with a French photographer, to her mother's unfulfilled dreams of Hollywod glamour, to her young sister's efforts to upstage the Queen on Coronation Day. Hurtling in and out of both World Wars, economic downfalls, the onset of the permissive '60s, and up to the present day, Ruby paints a rich and vivid portrait of family heartbreak and happiness.
babycronin avatar reviewed Behind the Scenes at the Museum on + 4 more book reviews
The book ended with hope but I got really depressed about how families can destroy each other. It reminded me too much of my own family history.
reviewed Behind the Scenes at the Museum on + 55 more book reviews
This book kept me turning the pages from beginning to end. A good read.
reviewed Behind the Scenes at the Museum on
Love this author's quirky, dark sense of humor. Have read most of her Jackson Brodie series but may have liked this one more. You may need a notepad to keep track of the characters in the different generations, though.
reviewed Behind the Scenes at the Museum on + 628 more book reviews
It's hard to believe that this is the author's first book; it is so confidently and poetically written. It was a ittle difficult to keep track of the family members as she went back and forth in time, but really a good read, engrossing, with biting humor and honest warmth. Think I'll have to buy more of her books to read now.
reviewed Behind the Scenes at the Museum on
After falling in deep love with Kate Atkinson's newest book, Life After Life, I was eager to get my eyes on everything else she had written.

Behind the Scenes at the Museum was disappointing to me, in comparison to LAL. I have enjoyed her Case History books, but nothing has lived up to LAL.

I think this is a case of having read an author's best book first. Behind the Scenes at the Museum is very well written, great characters, nothing bad to say about it, but my only real joy was in spying signs of the writing to come in Life After Life. Glad I read it and hope you will try it, too.

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