Behind the Scenes at the Museum: A Novel (Paperback)

~ (Author)
Key Phrases: lost property cupboard, little silver locket, Auntie Doreen, Auntie Babs, Monsieur Armand (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

"I exist!" exclaims Ruby Lennox upon her conception in 1951, setting the tone for this humorous and poignant first novel in which Ruby at once celebrates and mercilessly skewers her middle-class English family. Peppered with tales of flawed family traits passed on from previous generations, Ruby's narrative examines the lives in her disjointed clan, which revolve around the family pet shop. But beneath the antics of her philandering father, her intensely irritable mother, her overly emotional sisters, and a gaggle of eccentric relatives are darker secrets--including an odd "feeling of something long forgotten"--that will haunt Ruby for the rest of her life. Kate Atkinson earned a Whitbread Prize in 1995 for this fine first effort. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Publishers Weekly

The narrator's insistent voice and breezy delivery animates this enchanting first novel by a British writer who won one of the 1993 Ian St. James Awards for short stories. Ruby Lennox is a quirky, complex character who relates the events of her life and those of her dysfunctional family with equal parts humor, fervor and candor-starting with her moment of conception in York, England, in 1959: "I exist!" Ruby then describes the family she is to join. Her parents own a pet shop; her mother, Bunty, bitterly rues having married her philandering husband, George, and daydreams about what her life might have been. Ruby has two older sisters, willful Gillian and melancholy Patricia. Through its ambitious structure, the novel also charts five generations and more than a century of Ruby's family history, as reported in "footnotes" that follow relevant chapters. (For example, a passage about a pink glass button reveals the story of its original owner, Ruby's great-grandmother Alice, who will abandon her young family and run off with a French magician.) Ruby's richly imagined account includes both the details of daily life and the several tragic events that punctuate the family's mundane existence. Though the "footnote" entries are not quite as gripping as those rendered in Ruby's richly vernacular, energetic recitation, Atkinson's ebullient narrative style captures the troubled Lennox family with wit and poignant accuracy.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 333 pages
• Publisher: Picador; 1st edition (January 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0312150601
• ISBN-13: 978-0312150600
• Product Dimensions: 8.1 x 5.5 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (108 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #24,434 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

87 of 89 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars amazing, amazing, amazing, August 7, 1998

By	Patricia O'Tuama "rissa" (Illinois) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This is one of the best books I have ever read. I've been carrying it around with me, showing to all my friends and recommending that they read it, too. It's magical, magnificent, a very great, important piece of writing. Although the story revolves around Ruby and her family, the lives of her maternal great-grandmother, grandmother and mother are woven into the story so that in effect, the there two books here: Ruby and pre-Ruby. Several reviewers have described this novel as "one of the funniest books to come out of Britain in years (The NY Times Book Review) and as "comic" (Boston Sunday Globe) and while Behind the Scenes is enormously charming, inventive and endearing, don't buy this expecting it to be a funny or humorous book. At times it is unbearably sad, sadness tinged with dark scamperings of horror. I was telling my husband about this book and he kept saying, "this sounds awful, terrible things keep happening to these people," ! and while that is true, the author tells this story with a beautiful lightness that keeps Ruby safe despite her sadness.

One thing I found very interesting about this book was the way the women's lives went from the unending drudgery of cooking, cleaning, mending, pregnancy and taking care of numerous children by Alice, the great-grandmother who lived in rural 19th century England, to the comparatively empty days of Bunty, Ruby's mother, days that are filled up with a dedication to housekeeping that only mimics what was once a necessity of life. Alice lived in a world where the failure to bake bread and to keep up with darning and mending meant that children went hungry and cold in winter. Bunty lives in a world attached to a strict household schedule (washing on Monday, ironing on Tuesday, cleaning on Wednesday, etc) and where store-bought cakes and cookies are looked upon as evidence of a slatternly nature.

Another interesting this about this book is the way Ruby's! voice changes from when she is little to when she grows up! . Little Ruby is consumed with magical thinking, she believes in a world of ghosts where things happen for no reason and a deck of cards designed to teach the alphabet become a wondrous bridge to life away from home. As she grows, her voice takes on depth and the effects of secondary school and while the frivolity and delightful silliness that characterize little Ruby's world continue to exist, they are moderated by her maturity. This is a truly wonderful book.

32 of 32 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The real imaginary world of Ruby Lennox, October 15, 2002

By	Grady Harp (Los Angeles, CA United States) - See all my reviews (TOP 10 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

Friends sharing books they love usually means you're in for a treat. Thanks, Anya! BEHIND THE SCENES AT THE MUSEUM is a total triumph of a book. Voted a Whitbread Book of the Year when published in 1995 this extraordinarily entertaining novel was the first novel by Kate Atkinson and she surely knows her stuff. Not only is the writing of the first caliber, but the technique of storytelling is invigorating and fun and warm and tragic and in short, about as fine a coming of age novel as anyone has written.

Ruby Lennox narrates this delectable tale of her life in a dysfunctional geneology from the point of her conception ( thoroughly entertaining view of life from within the uterus) through her childhood and young adulthood up to the age of 41. Atkinson divides her book into Chapters and Footnotes: the Chapters are the chronological tale of the wonderfully crazy Ruby and her sisters and bizarre mother and father and the Footnotes after each chapter explore the history of her English family for the past century. This affords the reader with a history and an interpretation of that history by wily little girl who is wise beyond her antics. Ruby knows there must be a Lost Property Cupboard (her theory of the afterlife) 'where (when we die) all things we have ever lost have been kept for us - every button, every tooth..library books, all the cats that never came back...tempers and patience...meaning and innocence..dreams we forgot on waking, nestling against the days lost to melancholy thoughts....' That is just a sample of the beauty of Atkinson's writing gifts.

The world finally focuses for Ruby but to tell how would alter the joy of discovery this wonderful little character. 'I'm in another country, the one called home. I am alive. I am a precious jewel. I am a drop of blood. I am Ruby Lennox.' This is some of the best writing you'll find. After you've spent a rewarding time reading it, share it with someone you love. Again, Thank you Anya!

17 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Lives up to - and surpasses - its hype, June 1, 2000

By	Carol S. (Pennsylvania) - See all my reviews

The slightly surreal sound of this book - it begins with a woman narrating her own conception -made me fear this would be an annoyingly weird or obtuse book. I also was a little skeptical that the book could live up to its positive reviews. I was delighted to discover that it is not, and it does.

Atkinson effortlessly gets inside the head of protagonist Ruby from, yes, conception to middle age. Interwoven with Ruby's story are the stories of her female ancestors, viewed through the prism of contemporary British history. (A thinking Englishwoman's Forrest Gump?) It's all here: emotion, vivid description, gripping plot, characters that come alive, humor, sly wit, and a truly original and fresh writing style. This is one of those books that intrudes on your life, making you want to shove everything aside so you can keep on reading it. At the same time, you dread finishing it because then there won't be any more of it to read.