Transcription – Kate Atkinson
Little Brown & Co. | Hardcover | September 25, 2018
Spies. Fascists. BBC Radio. Love? Dogs.
In 1940 Juliet Armstrong is recruited by MI5 to roundup Nazi sympathizers in Great Britain. At first, she is only a typist, tasked to transcribe conversations between the enigmatic Godfrey Toby—who is posing as a German officer—and the Fascists who report their activities to him. But as one would expect, Juliet is soon given assignments of her own. Not only is she tasked to spy for MI5, but she is also asked to spy on Toby himself.
The strength of Atkinson’s novel is its structure. While it does have chapters it is divided more so by time. Atkinson flips back and forth between 1950 and 1940. In each time period you feel yourself slipping deeper into a trench, not bothering to come up for air because you are too consumed with Juliet’s endless snark, Toby’s charismatic mystery, Perry’s unfathomable mood swings, and what on earth will happen in next week’s installment of BBC’s history segment, and how Juliet will manage to find the ‘Red Book’ Mrs. Scaife has hidden in her house that supposedly contains a list of Nazi sympathizers and their allies, or what she is going to do about that threatening letter.
Yes, Atkinson’s brilliance is her ability to let you become completely submerged in her vast web of conflicts, by bringing you to the forefront of the conflict or discovery and then abruptly cutting the narrative to a different time. She deliberately drags you out, gasping and heaving, so that she can add new layers to the conflicts unfolding in Juliet’s ‘present.’[1]Even though they are ten years apart the events in 1940 and 1950 continue to inform one another and in time we come to see the true costs of Juliet’s decisions.
While Juliet is not isolated by any means it is clear—especially in the 1950’s—that she is disconnected. Her colleagues at the BBC have moved on from the war, but for Juliet, it never really ended. She is still involved with MI5 in 1950 and it is clear that her time in the service has made her indifferent to the trivial toils of day-to-day life. The only people we see Juliet truly connected with are those in the spy game. Even when Juliet receives the threatening note that she will “pay for what she has done” (referring to events that occurred in 1940) there is a sense of thrill that comes along with it, as if she has been jolted awake because she has an excuse to fully dive back into the world she feels most comfortable in. As a spy she can be whomever she wants.
What she cannot escape, however, is her predicament in 1981, which also is the narrative thread that feels the most incomplete. In 1981, the prologue, Juliet has been struck by a car and Atkinson doesn’t really bother to create a thread substantial enough to hold its own in the thick web of allies and affairs and enemies and questionable deeds Juliet navigates during the ’40s and the ’50s. In fact, the prologue and epilogue feel like unnecessary bookends that are there for show rather than use. But while the 1981 thread may not be taut it certainly does not unravel the rest of Atkinson’s action-packed, literary spy novel that takes a sincere look at a woman who is learning what it means to feel whole.
[1] While 1981 is technically the present while reading the novel I thought of 1950 as the present.
