Transcription - Hardcover

KATE ATKINSON won the Whitbread (now Costa) Book of the Year prize with her first novel, Behind the Scenes at the Museum. Her four bestselling novels featuring former detective Jackson Brodie became the BBC television series Case Histories, starring Jason Isaacs. The international sensation Life After Life was one of The New York Times's 10 Best Books of 2013, won the Costa Novel Award and the South Bank Sky Arts Literature Prize, and was shortlisted for the Women's Prize. Her companion novel, A God in Ruins, also won the Costa Novel Award and was an international bestseller. Atkinson was appointed MBE in the 2011 Queen's Birthday Honours List, and was voted Waterstones UK Author of the Year at the 2013 Specsavers National Book Awards.

National Bestseller
A New York Times Bestseller
A New York Times Editors' Choice
A Washington Post Notable Book of 2018
An NPR Best Book of 2018
A Slate Best Book of 2018
A Boston Globe Best Book of 2018
A BookPage Best Book of 2018
A Real Simple Best Book of 2018
A Goodreads Best Book of 2018

"[A] superb story of wartime espionage. . . . Hilary Mantel once said of Atkinson's ground-breaking first novel, Behind the Scenes at the Museum, that she had a 'game-plan more sophisticated than Dickens,' and that skill is more than evident in this latest offering. . . . Remarkable. . . . The sheer bravura of Atkinson's storytelling is such that you will find it impossible not to want to revisit those clues so cleverly placed, as you shake your head in disbelief at how effortlessly you have been taken in." —The Times Literary Supplement (TLS)
 
"[Transcription] never loses its sense of absurdity of human beings even in their most tragic or noble moments. . . . How vehemently most novelists will wish to produce a masterpiece as good." —The Daily Telegraph (UK)
 
"[Transcription] is a major event. . . . Atkinson loves her research, but she doesn't need much help concocting original stories that resemble no one else's and take the breath away." —The New York Times

"Atkinson's writing is, as always, heaven to read. . . . It's mesmerizing, from every angle." —The Seattle Times

"Atkinson has predicated her enormously successful career upon giving readers intelligent and artful iterations of what they already know they like: made-up Johns and Janes, in realistically described settings, enacting a plot that's not only ingeniously constructed but, in the end, fully resolved. . . . Yet Atkinson's exceptional reader-friendliness has always been a Trojan horse, a way of delivering something pointed in the guise of something smoothly familiar. She occupies that rare cultural sweet spot wherein she scoops up awards for artistic excellence while also reliably hitting the bestseller lists. . . . There is no question that a large part of what makes Atkinson's work so cleverly, stealthily affecting is its sheep's clothing." —The New Yorker

"A triumph." —Good Housekeeping

"Atkinson is brilliant. Her characters are brilliant. Her command of the back-and-forth narrative, the un-fixedness of memory, the weight that guilt accrues over time and how we carry it is remarkable. . . . Everything Atkinson does subverts the classic model of the spy story. . . . It's that grunginess, that groundedness, that attention to the tiny, personal, low-stakes details . . . that elevates Transcription." —NPR

"No other contemporary novelist has such supreme mastery of that sweet spot between high and low, literary and compulsively readable as Kate Atkinson. . . . I can't think of another serious novelist who makes you laugh so often or so gratefully. . . . Brimming with dancing dark wit that reminds you how deeply satisfying good fiction can be." —Allison Pearson, The Daily Telegraph (UK)

"Atkinson dissolves the choices that bedevil us: between big plots and wry, acute, noticing sentences; between genre and literary fiction; between the wildly popular and the wildly nuanced." —USA Today

"Ambitious and cerebral." —Toronto Star

"Atkinson creates a contemporary version of a ripping good yarn. . . . Her trick is to combine propulsive plot with a high degree of self-consciousness, and in Transcription the fiction comes with a skin so thin it is almost transparent. What she reveals of its inner working is a novel full of smoke and mirrors, of artifice and redirection in which all that is solid melts into air." —The Spectator

"Atkinson's wry style imbues the world of Transcription with moments of brisk cheer, as if Ian Fleming had been cross-pollinated with Barbara Pym. . . . [Transcription is] a testament to Atkinson's inventiveness as a storyteller, as well as to her powers for creating characters too real for comfort." —The Washington Post

"No matter the genre, Atkinson displays more wit and word play, more delight in the fecundity of the English language, than just about any contemporary novelist. . . . No matter how distractingly thrilling her plots are, we always sense a keen, and essentially verbal, intelligence behind them." —The Boston Globe

"Transcription, while sometimes fraught and tense, is more often shrewdly funny. . . . Atkinson runs around her spy novel, seeking out the genre's inflated pockets of self-importance and poking them with her sharp little needle." —Slate

"Transcription stands alongside its immediate predecessors as a fine example of Kate Atkinson's mature work, an unapologetic novel of ideas which is also wise, funny and paced like a thriller." —The Observer (UK)

"Atkinson never fails to take us beyond an individual's circumstances to the achingly human, often-contradictory impulses within. And, as all of Atkinson's readers know, she is an exquisite writer of prose, using language with startling precision whether she is plumbing an inner life, describing events of appalling violence or displaying her characters' wonderfully acerbic wit. . . . This is a wonderful novel about making choices, failing to make them and living, with some degree of grace, the lives our choices determine for us." ―Booklist, starred review

"There is intrigue. There are surprises. But the unknowns aren't always what we think they are. The deepest pleasure here, though, is the author's language. As ever, Atkinson is sharp, precise and funny." ―Kirkus Reviews, starred review

"If you're still obsessed with Kate Atkinson's Life After Life, you're going to fall head over heels for Transcription." ―POPSUGAR

"This is a novel about identity in which no one and nothing is exactly as they seem. . . . Atkinson is clearly having fun. . . . What elevates her fiction above mere playfulness is the emotional integrity of her characters. . . . Atkinson always puts on a damn fine show." —The Guardian (UK)

"A new Kate Atkinson novel is always a reason to rejoice and Transcription was everything I was hoping for and more. . . . The truly surprising denouement makes for one of the best conclusions of a novel I've ever read. I immediately wanted to read it all over again." —Red

"Kate Atkinson's splendid Transcription is a thrilling read. . . . [It is] a gripping spy story with a narrative so ingeniously, so perfectly constructed that as soon as I finished the book I wanted to read it again, just to marvel at how beautifully everything slots together. . . . Transcription is the sort of book that reminds you how profound and satisfying and moving and exhilarating good fiction can be. It's the best novel I've read all year. I can't praise it enough." —The Irish Times

"A treat—cerebral and suspenseful, playful and empathetic." —Mail on Sunday (UK)
 
"Full of intrigue. . . . Sublimely suspenseful—droll, devious and deadly, beautifully serious." —Sunday Express (UK)

"In Transcription, Kate Atkinson recasts the bildungsroman within the fertile genre of the spy thriller. . . . Kate Atkinson has always enjoyed playing with genre. . . . As the plot of this accomplished novel hurtles towards its astonishing denouement, even the canniest reader may feel wrong-footed." —Literary Review

"[Transcription] is already being touted as [Atkinson's] most assured and affecting [novel] yet. Atkinson often plays hard and fast with structure, and fans will be heartened to know that this book is no exception, culminating in a fantastically shocking, clever ending. . . . Transcription's bait-and-switch ending—and it would be a shame to reveal too much of it here—proves that in terms of finesse and assuredness, Atkinson as a writer is moving on and up inexorably. In the purple patch where marketability and literary flair meet, Atkinson finds herself in the finest of company." —Irish Independent

"There are plenty of twists and turns in this terrific page-turner, some shocking moments and a narrator whom the author encourages us to love. . . . But writing a novel is like a form of deep cover, and perhaps Atkinson is like the spy in this one, whose handler says admiringly 'the mark of a good agent is when you have no idea which side they're on.' You'll be kept guessing until the end." ―Evening Standard (UK)

"Atkinson handles her mazy, Le Carre-style plot with complete authority. But there's a lot more to the novel than its page-turning thrills. The increasingly skeptical Juliet makes for a very appealing heroine and the darker material is interspersed with some neat comedy. Above all, Atkinson recreates the atmosphere of both wartime and post-war London with utter conviction." ―Reader's Digest (UK)

"Kate Atkinson's fluid identity as a novelist has long marked her out as one of Britain's most interesting—and often underrated—writers. . . . Atkinson's depiction of espionage and counter-espionage on the Home Front is nimble and convincing. . . . But there is an immensely serious book here too, waiting in the wings to reveal itself on the very last pages; a book that asks us to question the entertainment we’ve just gobbled up, and to reckon with what lies beneath it.” —New Statesman

"Kate Atkinson is a masterful manipulator of lies. Transcription is a spectacular game of deception, her own perfect plot. It is as twisty and efficient—everything falls into place like the tumblers of a combination lock—as the best of Le Carré." —Washington Independent Review of Books

"In Atkinson's deliberate and manipulative hands, spy stories are simply regular fiction on steroids." —Maclean's

"The reader watches the slow, intimate unravelling of Juliet 'like a ball of wool' as she veers from naïve and romantic to violent and despairing. This, combined with the clipped tones, casual sexism and dry war humour, lend the book authenticity and sharp poignancy. . . . It is the questions left unanswered—what is the worth of war? Does self-doubt lie at the root of destruction?—that make the book so addictive." —The Economist

"Kate Atkinson is a wonderful writer. I want to write like her when I grow up. Transcription shows she's at the peak of her powers. Full of beautiful, delicate, sharp sentences and characterizations. A spy novel that dismantles the whole genre. A class act, as ever." ―Matt Haig, bestselling author of Reasons to Stay Alive and How to Stop Time

"I loved Kate Atkinson's Transcription―you don't know if it's a farce about spies, or a spy story about farce." ―Hanya Yanagihara, author of A Little Life

"Atkinson writes with wit and verve, bringing London in 1940 to vibrant life." —Stephen King