The fog is not there just to create mood (“that’s all I need, Juliet thought – atmosphere”) it symbolises the “fog of obfuscation” in which they are all operating. Then it is back to 1940 (this wouldn’t be a Kate Atkinson novel if it didn’t play fast and loose with time), and we discover that Juliet worked for MI5 (after “that well-trodden path” via Oxbridge and the BBC), recording meetings of British fascists and Nazi sympathisers – the transcriptions of the title. Juliet, we learn, was damaged long before the car incident, first by the death of her mother – “the only person who loved her” – and then by “the wounds of war”. “Yet suddenly it all seemed like an illusion, a dream that had happened to somebody else.”Ī couple of pages later we are in 1950: Juliet is on the brink of “turning into that dreaded creature, a spinster”, working in the schools department of the BBC, producing radio shows called Past Lives and Looking at Things, “bringing Everyman to life through the ages”. “It had probably been a long enough life,” she reflects as she lies on the London pavement. It is 1981, the year of a royal wedding, andJuliet is 60. She has been hit by a car while crossing the road after a Shostakovich concert. W hen we first meet Juliet Armstrong she is “badly damaged.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |