While I expected time travel to play a more significant role in the book it seemed almost an afterthought . I usually don't enjoy that type of thing but this was fun. I did get somewhat frustrated by all the alternate realities in the final quarter of the book. The traditionalist in me wanted to know the "real" story, but that is Atkinson's point...that lies with the storyteller who "knows how it ends". Why has a crowd of well dressed toffs and some early shift workers gathered outside Holloway Prison so early one morning in 1926? It’s for ‘her’ - the her in question being Ma (Nellie/Ellen) Coker, the Queen of Clubs, the shrines of post war gaiety as she’s released from a six month stint inside. Watching Ma leave and the crowd disperse is DCI John Frobisher and he has a plan and Gwendolen Kelling, a librarian from York finds herself in the midst of it all.

All of the characters are multilayered and unique. Gwendolen was my favorite, but I could have used more chapters from ruthless Ma Coker’s POV. It isn’t often that one reads the portrayal of a female gangster in the 1920s.Four men who meet as college roommates move to New York and spend the next three decades gaining renown in their professions—as an architect, painter, actor and lawyer—and struggling with demons in their intertwined personal lives. Although, if you do fancy a visit to 1926 London, this novel definitely takes you there with its vivid, lifelul descriptions. Umm, that’s not actually ironic, that’s just the classic Russian Doll genre - an intentionally bad story within a magical-realist story within a po-mo story. But what’s the problem with that, except no humour yet? Isobel Fairfax, the heroine of ''Human Croquet,'' is an omniscient narrator who, paradoxically, often hasn't a clue about what has really happened. Like Ruby Lennox, the droll narrator of ''Behind the Scenes at the Museum,'' This one was really 2.5 stars for me. I rarely dole out half stars and I don't usually have to deliberate over star allotment. But Emotionally Weird left me conflicted. I liked the first half, was bored for the second half but it does have a pretty good ending with clever last lines. I was disappointed that I didn't love Emotionally Weird, as I usually love Kate Atkinson's experimental novels. But you win some, you lose some.

Human Croquet by one of my favorite British authors, Kate Atkinson, did not disappoint. Ms. Atkinson's writing is marked not only by beautiful and haunting prose but her sharp writing can only be described as audacious. Spending time with Kate Atkinson is always magical. But Bruce Katz (Goodreads great guy) is absolutely right —this book is certainly more like “A God in Ruins” than “Life After Life”….. Years ago, her husband had gambled all the family money away, so Nellie had taken her four children and joined forces with a disreputable man called Jaeger, who had been running ‘tango teas’ during the war, but by 1918, people were ready to really party. 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.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. The ending itself is quite weird. Seemed rushed in some parts, and somewhat confusing (Gwendolen and Niven's part, and particularly Florence's part. It just seemed so out of place, odd and pointless).

In a way. Nora could be too, for that matter, as there’s barely any corroboration of her story either. Except at the end where ...’ Kate Atkinson once again blew me away with this book. I had just finished reading "Case Histories" (5 stars), an unforgettable non-traditional mystery and expertly woven tale of identity and attachment, when I found "Human Croquet" on top of a phone box in my neighborhood. This copy has been read by a young adult who circled all the words she didn't know (quite a few in this very British book). The novel is scattered with literary allusions - the Shakespearean ones being the most obvious to me - and Atkinson's writing is rich in clever wordplay. But ultimately it's one of those works which is exhausting rather than completely satisfying and I can't help but wonder if lots of it went over my head. Overall, this was not an easy book to read and I can't say that the experience was one of unalloyed pleasure. The characters have haunted me though, so that says something about the power of Atkinson's prose.Isobel has a brother named Charles, who is fascinated by topics generally regarded as science fiction. His particular interests center on alien abductions. This may be due in part to the disappearance of Charles and Isobel's mother, Eliza, when they were young. They also lost their father, Gordon, for a seven-year period immediately following the disappearance of their mother.