This is a beautiful story about an elderly woman who was hit by a car. As they wait for the ambulance she flashes back through her life to the 1940's and her job during World War II. Juliet was 18 years old in 1940 and the war had everyone working. She was recruited to work in the office that transcribed conversations between Fascist sympathizers and spies. Soon she is in the room as a spy. This is a good historic look at how government operated during the war. When the war ends and she moves on to a job in television she is amazed that the spying and agents never end. With double agents and questions about loyalty she relives it all. The characters are great and the plot takes some unexpected turns. I received a copy of this ARC in exchange for a fair and honest review.

I thought learning about British spying during WWII was interesting, but there were a lot of confusing things in this book. I feel like there were parts of the plot that didn't end up being explained, and the ending was way different than I expected. Juliet was not my favorite character, and it felt a little slow. Still, it was a decent read, and I would definitely read more Kate Atkinson books.

I know so many people who will love this book and I can't wait to hand-sell it to them. Espionage, great writing, and a compelling main character. What more could you ask for?

I recommend this book in a blog post called "24 much-anticipated new titles to add to your fall To Be Read list" on Modern Mrs Darcy, and numerous times on the What Should I Read Next podcast!

Another smart, chewy thriller-esque narrative by the queen of smart, chewy thriller-esque narratives.

I received an ARC of this book from the publisher via Net Galley.

I am a big fan of historical fiction and I love an author that does her homework. The author notes at the end were extensive and the list of her sources was long.

The bulk of the novel plays out during WWII, but the book does move back and forth in time a bit. Our heroine, Juliet Armstrong, is drafted into MI5 to transcribe the tapes of meetings between an MI5 agent and Nazi sympathizers. Or course, things are never quite as they appear and things get complicated. It is not as fast paced as you might expect for a spy book, but it works great as historical fiction.

This novel was easily one of my top 10 fiction reads of 2019, mentioned both in the paper and in my book instagram.

I consider A God in Ruins to be the type of book that changes lives & hearts, so to say I had high hopes for Transcription would be understating it. I wasn't disappointed, per se, but this doesn't have the brilliance of her stories about Ursula and Teddy, nor was Juliet a particularly easy character to love or root for or empathize with.

Switching between timelines as Atkinson is wont to do, Transcription is about Juliet Armstrong, a woman recruited to MI5 at the age of 18. She's to work as a secretary, transcribing notes from the meetings between a double agent and Hitler sympathizers. The story alternates between Juliet at that age, and Juliet after the war, with everything in tatters, ships sunk and everyone long dead, trying to come to grips with the changes in her life.

The sparks of magic here are in Atkinson's details. She has such a canny ability to make you feel immersed in a character and in their time. Her dialogue is second-to-none, and that way she has of quietly but brutally breaking your heart is breathtaking (the dogs... WHY, Kate? Why??). It's in those moments that her abilities as an author clamp down and don't let go for anything.

While I didn't find that I loved Juliet like I adored Teddy, I don't think that was the point. Juliet isn't particularly interested in being liked, nor is she particularly interested in being adored. What Juliet's true motivations are, I'm not sure any of us could fathom (the end is a bit of a shocker, in my humble opinion - not sure it was quite 'earned' either). We're left dangling, as if of a ship, unmoored and unsure - trying to discover what the real truth was or if there ever was one, at all. Perhaps all that is left is the endless cycle of war and peace, peace and war.

Transcription is a stirring, imperfect, elegant, surprisingly funny and complicated novel from one of the greatest writers of our age.

I loved back when Atkinson wrote mysteries, they were very good. Then, Life After Life came out and it's one of my favorite books I have ever read. After that, A God in Ruins was, well, just okay. And this one follows the downward trend. I liked the main character, but man was this book boring.

The book opens with an elderly woman getting hit by a car and her life story, during the war and a few years after it ended, unfolds.

Juliet Armstrong was an 18-year-old young girl hired to take transcription for the British government during WW II. As she listened to conversations of traitors, she documented their interactions with other pro-German sympathizers. Years later, when the war was over, she worked for the BBC and her past war work comes into play once again.

Atkinson writes of real historic events, infusing them with fictional details. The spy business is depicted as a routine job at times. But with a surprise twist, all is not as simple as first thought. Her characters drive the plot. The people Juliet interacts with are a bit mysterious but then, they are traitors, spies and British agents. The job of taking down conversations isn’t glamorous but it does have its moments of excitement. It is the mystery that evolves years later that weaves the story together.

A fascinating book that slips in and out through time building a story of a young woman who accidentally fell into the espionage business. Though the action is not grand, the story has a gravity to its events and will delight readers.

Four stars

I have devoured everything written by this author and have delighted in each and every book she has written.

I really enjoyed this new tale of an inexperienced young woman’s recruitment and subsequent adventures as a spy in England during World War II. As others have noted, the leaps back and forth through time can be confusing. I found myself going back to re-read some sections in order to keep the chronology and characters straight and sometimes got mixed up, especially with the male characters.

The evolution of Juliet Armstrong during the war years, beginning first as a typist transcribing conversations overheard in the next apartment between sympathizers and a male spy, and leading to an infiltration of the group under an assumed identity switches to her work with the BBC years later in London. We see a naïve young woman bumbling about as a spy transformed into a world-weary, cynical producer of tedious programming.

The revelations of what happened during the war years come slowly as the story moves back and forth in time. At one point, in the 1950 period, as she visits a grave of one of her previous identities, she muses, “I have been too many people…” She goes on to list them, and thinks, ‘And then there was Juliet Armstrong, of course, who some days seemed like the most fictitious of them all, despite being the “real” Juliet. But then what constituted real? Wasn’t everything, even this life itself, just a game of deception?’

This sums up the core sentiment of this lovely, exquisitely written novel. The various settings, from wartime London to the early days of the BBC, are rendered in such a way as to immerse the reader completely into those worlds.

I was a little disappointed by the two short present-day (1981) sections that bracket the story (beginning and end.) Without giving anything away, I thought they were sad parentheses and wished for more details to anchor them to the larger story.

That said, I still highly recommend this novel. Thank you to Little, Brown and Company and Net Galley for allowing me to read the ARC before publication.

I made the mistake of reading this slowly, and lost track of many of the minor characters, so I spent more time figuring out who was who than sinking into the story. Some redemption at the end, but not my favorite by Ms. Atkinson... and that is 100% my own fault.

I've read several of Kate Atkinson's books and loved them. But I just could not get past the first few chapters of this one. I tried several times.

Transcription, by Kate Atkinson, is a transfixing novel set primarily in London during WWII. It is a complex mix of genres: historical fiction, mystery, thriller, and character study. Juliet is everything you would expect from a heroine in that she is plucky, smart, and resourceful. She is also painfully naïve and simultaneously cynical and funny…saying one thing while aware that she is thinking something entirely contrary. This story has a lot of espionage-related action, including murder, but we see and process it from Juliet’s vantage point. As with our own lives, what is most dramatic in retrospect was mundane when it happened.

Atkinson is a master of prose and literature. I always want a highlighter nearby to capture a particularly memorable sentence or reference. Also, I suspect that I eventually will want to reread this novel for its language and nuance, taking my time to savor both without the need to rush ahead to learn the story’s end.

Thanks to NetGalley and Little, Brown and Company for the opportunity to read this book in exchange for an honest review.

#Transcription #NetGalley

A wonderful whirlwind of espionage, secrecy, and full of wit.
Transcription is a great piece of historical fiction that is cleverly written. Chapters alternate between 10 years.
Readers will enjoy the main character Juliet and the adventures she is caught in.
I am not an avid reader of historical fiction, it really enjoyed Atkinson's writing and storytelling.

Kate Atkinson is one of my favorite authors so of course I was excited to read her latest -- but this book turned out to be tedious. It just went on and on with narrative of meaningless transcripts and boring BBC politics--and got worse as we got into the second half of the book. When there were hints that something might happen, I got excited to read on but then it evaporated back into humdrum and silly details. Atkinson's writing is good, and I enjoyed the narrator's humor -- but other than that, this book was a struggle to get through.

Not my favorite of Atkinson's works, but a good read, though slow at times. The pacing varied and the timelines were at times confusing.

This kept making me think of Ian McEwan, in all the best ways. London during wartime, just like Ato ement. Check. Hyper literate spies that battle through words not gunfire like Sweet Tooth. Check. Twisty resolution like most of the McEwan canon. Check. Atkinson elevates what could be mere pastiche into something far more human and moving through the quality of her prose and the depht of her humanity. This is ad clever as it is moving.

I usually love WWII books, and I was so intrigued by this one as it flipped between what this woman did during the war and sometime in the 50s dealing with the aftermath. I kept on wondering where it was going, and then when it got there it was a surprise. Instead of ending there it continues and fast forwards to her last days. I’m not sure what this added to the novel. It was a pleasure to read something about the aftermath and what people were dealing with, finding out things aren’t what they seem, but then nothing happened. I get that life is like that, and I like a lot of books that mirror the realities of life. But after hearing so much praise for Kate Atkinson I guess I don’t understand. I wish I had better things to say, I hope others enjoy it more.

While this book did have "depth and texture" as the blurb suggests and was a good book, it felt almost plodding, at least compared to others of her books. It didn't totally bowl me away like Life after Life or impress me as much as A God in Ruins. If this was the first book of hers I read, I'd enjoy it but I wouldn't be desperate for her next offering. That being said, as a fan of historical fiction, I did find the workings of wartime MI5 and especially the post-war BBC to be fascinating, and I really appreciated the amount of research that went into the book. But on the whole, it's pretty difficult to read a normal book by someone whose sheer brilliance you have glimpsed multiple times before.