The book begins and ends in 1981, when Miss Juliet Armstrong, having just returned to London after years abroad, has stepped in front of a taxi and been run over. The meat of the story has to do with Juliet’s past as a transcriptionist for MI5 in the Second World War and her work with a BBC children’s radio program a decade later. Juliet thought that her past was behind her until she received a threatening message at work. Then she begins to see people she knew during the war years. One of them, Godfrey Toby, had been a double agent during the war. But whose side was he on? And how about the others from her past? What terrible memory do they share?

Kate Atkinson breaks conventions for avoiding plots that hinge on coincidence. Somehow she makes it work. Maybe it’s as simple as having her characters acknowledge and struggle with them. This book is short enough to read in a single evening, and I wish I had approached it that way. The plot and characters are complicated enough that it’s easy to forget important details between sittings. The plot and setting feel authentic, and they’re based on real events and people from the war years and British Broadcasting. Recommended for Atkinson’s fans and fans of World War II espionage stories.

This review is based on an electronic advance reading copy provided by the publisher through NetGalley.

One of the books that I have on my Kindle, waiting to be read, is Kate Atkinson’s Life After Life. That book got an extraordinary amount of praise from the book publications that I read at the time, which made me interested in it. Alas, it still sits unread, but when Atkinson’s new novel Transcription — a bit of a World War II espionage thriller — came up, I was eager to read it. And so I have. And I have to admit that this book simply wasn’t my cup of tea for a number of reasons. I’ll get into those reasons, but I also have to admit that this book will probably have its supporters. (I haven’t read any other review, to keep my own reviewing taint-free.) I will concede that it is generally well written — if you can overlook the fact that Atkinson loves making tons of parenthetical statements that distract the reader to the point of wanting to throw the book across the room. What’s more, Atkinson is a capable writer who is able to keep all sort of plot threads hanging together. And the book does work to a degree as a sort of semi-comedic thriller at times. Still, I found it lacking, strangely.

Transcription is set in 1940s London and follows the adventures of an 18-year-old woman named Julie Armstrong, who is recruited by British spy agency MI5 to type transcripts of conversations held between Nazi sympathizers in England and a double agent. However, for reasons that are not really clearly explained, she eventually becomes a spy herself and sort of bungles the job while she’s at it. (Which makes you wonder why she was even recruited in the first place.) Flash forward 10 years later and Juliet is working for the BBC but has a foot still stuck in the spy game. When characters from the War begin reappearing in her life, Juliet begins to wonder if her life is truly in danger again. And the novel flips back and forth between these timelines from there.

My biggest beef with Transcription is that it is chock loaded with minor supporting characters — too many of them. It was really hard for me to keep straight who’s who and what their relations were — though that might be the point of a novel that’s about moles and double agents. Still, we find out loads of stuff about Juliet’s coworkers at the BBC, for instance, and not one of them to my recollection has anything to do with the spy story. It’s as though the author was padding things out simply to have a novel instead of a novella. I found the BBC material didn’t really add anything to the story except dollops of humour and little more. In the end, I was kind of confused as to why Atkinson spent so much time on it, except for the point made in an author’s note at the end of the book that histories of the BBC were being read at the same time as this book was being written. Consider it a case of an author falling in love with source material that doesn’t really expose much to the basic plot.

As alluded to earlier, we never really get a good reason as to why Juliet transforms from a typist to a spy, except for perhaps adding a more feminist angle to the story — and I shouldn’t really complain about that as I appreciate where the author may be coming from. Still, Juliet makes some basic mistakes in her work that basically puts the lives and identities of the people she works with in danger, which leads one to wonder what her superiors were thinking. This is a young woman who is untested material, and suddenly she’s allowed to go off and have adventures. Again, I can appreciate where the author is going with this, but it just doesn’t really work in the context of the time period.

Thirdly, the novel has a light, comedic tone that seems to be at odds with the setting. Juliet basically spends the novel cracking jokes to herself, and a major plot point revolves around what happened to a dog (of all things). The tone seems a bit “off” for a WWII novel. I suppose that since the novel is largely set in the early days of the war that this can be sort of overlooked by some readers, but I found that the humor was too “flighty” for lack of a better word — the kind of humor that makes the odd allusion to the works of Shakespeare and such to make this work appear to be more literary and erudite than it needs to be. The novel, to me, risked really walking over the line from lightly humourous to all-out parody. I mean, if you count the number of times the characters sit down for a lovely and delightful afternoon tea (with conversation), you could probably play a drinking game of your own with the book — if you were prone to do so.

Overall, I found my interest waning in this title as it wore on. When a plot twist is revealed in the dying pages of Transcription, it seems to be too little, too late — it’s as though the novel is suddenly taking itself very dead serious all of a sudden, which is the kind of touch that was needed much earlier on. For instance, when Juliet makes her screw ups as a spy, why isn’t she reprimanded? Instead, it’s all treated as a joke when, as it turns out, the stakes — for the most part — are in the 1950s rather high. Perhaps the author was swayed by the fact that this type of spy work didn’t win the war, per se, so she felt she could take some liberties with it, especially when it comes to downplaying certain things.

In any event, I found Transcription to be a rather plodding, confusing and grossly overly humourous novel without any real sense of danger or threat until the very end. While it is competently written, and I think — based on the author’s note — I know where she was trying to go with this, I think this book is a case of an author fabricating things and reaching her own conclusions based on the sparseness of the material she had to work with (MI5 didn’t want to divulge its secrets to her, after all). As a result, Transcription doesn’t really fire on all cylinders as it really should. Which is a shame, of course, because, ultimately, I think I’m going to put off reading Life After Life that much longer now. Oh well. Plenty of other books to read, I suppose.

Tl;dr: Brilliant but uncomfortable in that we are all unreliable narrators to one degree or another, aren't we?

I was apprehensive about reading Transcription due to the lower than usual ratings on Goodreads, but I ended up loving it even as I was made extremely disquieted by it. I do think a lot of people won't like it, but those who do will *love* it.

It's difficult to talk about the novel without spoilers, but here we go--with the caveat that there will be what some may consider spoilers (in that you can't really talk about Transcription without them (ha!)):

SPOILER LIGHT (???) WARNING:

Transcription, appears, at first glance, to be a very English novel. We begin at the end, then go back to a time when the mc, Juliet, is working for the BBC, then go back again immediately to a time when she's working for MI-5 prior to the Blitz, primarily typing up transcripts of what can best be described as tedious meetings between ordinary people who were infatuated with Hitler (!) and an agent who intercepts their (never useful) information. There's an awful lot of tea and tea making, as well as eating, which is plodding but I think, the point. Spying, like life, is mostly ordinary, even dull.

Of course, there's some action, and a lot of young and older Juliet marveling at how useless everyone seems to think she is (which she isn't, of course).

A grim picture of England's rigid class structure is painted, which, as those on top ran much of the pre-Blitz world (and post war, to be honest) created a country that thought it was working to stop Hitler but really dithered about until the very real threat of invasion happened. I think this is true of most wars--they never seem real until you find you're in one.

As such, those looking for a rousing story will be disappointed even though the framework for an adventure is placed--because adventure isn't what's the point.

There are breadcrumbs laid for what is, from Juliet's hearty appetite (she's never full), her rather excellent ability to dissemble, her knack for finding a way out of difficult spots, and her sticky fingers when the situation presents itself. Even passing comments by those Juliet is either wary of, cross with, or annoyed by about oh, of course they were a REDACTED before the war, or who had a passing fancy for it, and even in her own very metaphorical gun to head moment early on lay the groundwork for what I think is the most polarizing part of the novel.

There is, of course, a twist at the end (when is there usually not one?) and although it does seem to come out of the blue, it really doesn't. We were reading Juliet's story all along after all, and as she takes great pains to remind us, she is a very good liar. We got a story about the ordinary with some adventures along the way--so what if certain things (one major thing) wasn't exactly included?

Transcription is, I think, largely about how we are all unreliable narrators, how we are both heroes and villians, ordinary yet sometimes not. Yet if asked to tell our story, wouldn't we do what Juliet does and tell just that--a story?

As a whole, I think Transcription will be very annoying to many. It's an adventure story without much adventure. It has a main character who glosses over things like, say, the entirety of the English war effort just as it really starts ( I think there's perhaps half a page or so, dryly included as if it was an afterthought, which to Juliet, I think it was--she had grown weary of the English effort (or ineffort) by then.)

Her time at the BBC is largely driven by her annoyance at the petty dramas she finds herself in, as well as her non interest ( or so it seems) in how MI 5 uses her for trivial things (that perhaps aren't)

And there's that twist, which I loved! (The cheese stands alone...?,)

Having dragged you this far (if you're still here), I thought Transcription was f*cking brilliant.

Would I recommend it to fans of her Jackson Brodie books? No, because this is a story about stories, and a very well done (sometimes uncomfortably so) look at the lies we tell others and ourselves when we tell our own stories--sometimes unintentionally but usually to show ourselves in the best light for our audience.

It's a tricky thing, to write about the banality of war while framing it as a heroic storty where no one is heroic at all. Do I think Ms. Atkinson pulls it off? Absolutely.

For fans of introspection to the point of uncomfortableness, and of literary novels wrapped (thinly) in the veil of suspense, I highly recommend this. I don't think this should be classified as popular fiction because it isn't (and I predict it won't be)

The very high hardcover price will make this a hard one to handsell--though I did receive an ARC, I will be waiting to buy it when it's out in paperback because although I love it, it's not something I'll be reading when I want comfort. I'll be rereading it (and underlining a lot, because there's so much think-y stuff in here) when I want to be reminded of one of the uncomfortable but fundamental things about myself and everyone else, which is that we all tell stories. We're all liars. (eta: and I am one as I just bought the book!)

So, five stars for this brilliant in a painful truth way novel.

I'll be looking for readers who liked Atkinson's Behind the Scenes at the Museum and Coetzee's brilliant Waiting for thr Barbarians to be fans of this, so kind of a niche group. (Any other titles this would pair with, please comment away!)

Did I mention the five stars? (I know I did, but worth repeating!)

Lovers of Kate Atkinson will not be dissapointed and those just discovering her will be completely engaged. Once again, Atkinson's work is original, clever and smart. Shifting between WW II spying and the 1950's BBC, this historical fiction (with emphasis on the fiction), will keep you guessing.

Atkinson is such fun to read. She manages to breath so much life into her characters, even the secondary ones, and her writing is full of effortless description and a wry wit that sprinkles hints of humor throughout a relatively dark story. I didn't love this quite as much as Life After Life, but it was still really compelling and fun to read. Juliet, a transcriptionist for an MI5 mission, begins the story as a somewhat naive, innocent woman (or so it seems), but as her role in the war effort progresses, she morphs into a much more complex character with secrets to hide and people wanting to uncover them. By the end I wasn't totally sure what to think of Juliet - but that seems appropriate for a story about a WWII era spy. Atkinson's author's note on how she was inspired to write Transcription (it's loosely based on real MI5 reports and transcriptions) was pretty fascinating as well.

Book and Film Globe Review: Author Kate Atkinson is on a roll, having reached a new peak of critical and popular success with her “let’s try that again” novel Life After Life. Atkinson’s flight of fancy involved a heroine who lived her life over and over again, first dying as a newborn baby, but then being born again and surviving. She later heads down different paths in life after life, revealing destiny, or the lack thereof, for all of us. Now, in the WW II spy novel Transcription, Atkinson gives us a heroine who tries on new lives the way others try on a new frock.

She’s Juliet Armstrong, an orphan in her teens chosen to be a typist at MI5 during the war. Juliet first works in a flat next to a meeting place for fascist sympathizers. A double agent is pretending to be a Gestapo contact, thus luring in would-be traitors so Juliet can type up their incriminating conversations. Soon, she’s in the field, cozying up to a wealthy Nazi-lover and discovering a lovely gift for lying.

Juliet is a treat and Atkinson’s novel is at its best when squarely inside her mind. Whether she’s an unwitting beard to a gay co-worker (wondering plaintively why he doesn’t shag her already) or simply commenting on the world around her, Juliet’s witty mental asides are hilarious and spot on. They bring to life this seemingly quiet cog in the war machinery.

But just as veterans of war often say life was never that exciting again, Transcription fades quite a bit when the fighting ends. Juliet washes up on the beaches of the BBC, working on dull radio plays intended to educate school children. Office intrigue simply can’t compete with foreign intrigue.

When Juliet is asked at times to serve as a safe house for MI5, the pulse does not pound; it feels more like a tiresome burden than a chance to live again the excitement of war. Worse, the novel plays very unfair when we discover–much too late–most everyone in the book has crucial information that we do not. An unreliable narrator is one thing. An unreliable author is quite a different pot of tea. -- Michael Giltz

There will be some fake identities, deception, infiltrations, webs of deceit, war, murder, moles, espionage, and the job of transcriptions and the work of being a spy as an eighteen-year-old, Juliet Armstrong would find herself amongst, along with plenty cups of tea, and keep calm and carry on.

The author cleverly uses history and plays in part with it, as this is a fiction narrative, and in process crafting an evocative enigma of a tale, that proves to be intriguing and suspenseful reading, and a nostalgic portrait of a female agent and transcriber, Juliet Armstrong.

There are some scenes that occur in Dolphin Square, Pimlico London. This is to be the place of work for the new recruit.
There is some historical truth of MI5 there, on Wikipedia there is this,“It provided a base for the Free French during World War II and number 308 Hood House was used by MI5 section B5(b) responsible for infiltrating agents into potentially subversive groups from 1924 to 1946.[7]”
There is also an office for MI5 in this narrative in Wormwood Scrubs London, of which now serves as a prison that was in second world war actually used as office space, noted in Wikipedia also, “During the Second World War, the prison was taken over by the War Department and the prisoners were evacuated to other prisons. It was used as secure office space for the duration of hostilities, and housed MI5 and MI8.

This book was extremely well written. I also enjoyed the cast of characters and seeing how things played out for each of them over the course of the 40s/50s. I felt invested in the intrigue of Juliet's path and also her consternation about knowing whom to trust and who was really on the "good side". I will admit that as I got to the last 1/3 of the book, I started to get a bit confused about who was "good" or "bad". There were so many stories surrounding the 40s and 50s to wrap up, along with so many characters that I was left feeling as if I had somehow missed an important piece of information regarding Juliet and the actual role she played. Overall, an enjoyable read. Thank you to net galley and the publisher for allowing me the ARC.

Thank you to Little, Brown and Co. for the eARC of this book. I loved Kate Atkinson’s Life After Life, so I was delighted to find that she had another WWII centered book coming out.
In this book we follow Juliet both during her time as a transcriptionist for an MI5 operation, and during her work for the BBC after the war. The events of the war unfolded slowly throughout the story, and there is a lot of mystery about what side some of Juliet’s colleagues are on, and what really happened.
I really appreciated that this wasn’t a story we hear often about the war - there were so many people working “behind the scenes” of the war effort. It was also fascinating to read about the BBC in the post war era.

TRANSCRIPTION by Kate Atkinson is full of good writing and clever plot twists. I was intrigued by the topic as it has been a long time since I read a spy novel. I think that Atkinson tackles the storyline and the character development really well – it’s my favorite thing about her as an author. You get to know the characters quite well in her stories. However, this is not a book to read a little at a time. There are a lot of identities and dual time periods and so it can get a little confusing at times. 3.5 stars.

I received an ARC of this novel from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own.

Yay! Kate Atkinson gives us a completely new take on London during World War II. Riveting and suprising.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for this wonderful ARC. I read Life After Life and A God in Ruins and found them to be my favorite books of each respective year I read them. I had some trepidation going into this that Atkinson couldn't possibly pull off a triple threat. I admit I did not love this quite as much as Life After Life- and nobody could make me feel all the feels like Teddy in his book. But Transcription's heroine is intentionally more stand-offish. She lies perfectly, her world is a series of rooms that she wanders in and through and only occasionally is she (or we the readers) made aware of what's really happening in them. This book is so thoroughly researched, and so creatively imagined, that I felt implicated as a reader in the plot and the intrigue of her life in MI5. I also loved the idea of a continuity between and through the secret service and the BBC- something that others might be aware of, but was new ground for me. The ironies of using broadcasting of reality to subvert and evolve that reality is extremely convincing. This is a war novel, but it's also a study in how we can live and lie and of course a depiction of how even the most common and quiet of characters can have a rich internal life, and change the course of history (at least a bit). Will it be my favorite book of 2018? Not yet clear. Will it be a book I think of and reflect on for a long time? Assuredly. It also made me desperately want a tea break.

I have loved many of Kate Atkinson’s books (esp the Jackson Brodie series), and was happy to receive a copy of Transcription from Little, Brown & Co. and NetGalley In return for my honest review.

Possibly I am just burned out on historical fiction set in and around WWII featuring a plucky heroine, but…this didn't do it for me (and my expectations were high, because...well, it is Kate Freaking Atkinson!)

The story begins in 1940, when Juliet Armstrong (plucky 18-year old) is recruited into a little-known department of MI5. She is assigned to monitor Nazi sympathizers, and despite the tedium of transcribing conversations verbatim, she is rather pleased to be gradually pulled into the world of “real” espionage. Once the war is over, she assumes those days are past, and she goes on to develop her own career in radio, working for BBC.  There is a new war going on, featuring changes of enemies (suddenly the formerly allied Soviet Union is an enemy, etc.) and she gets dragged into an ongoing saga. Various recurring characters, blah blah blah

Extremely well written, as I expect from Ms. Atkinson, with well-develop characters and fascinating facts about espionage. So what's my problem? Maybe I am just exhausted by politics, lies, and creepy men in power, but it really just didn’t do it for me. So it’s only 3 stars (I am a notoriously easy grader), and I still love Atkinson’s writing, but I am sorry to say I was not enthralled with this one as I had hoped – perhaps overly high expectations? Anyway, 3 ***

"A dramatic story of WWII espionage, betrayal, and loyalty, by the #1 bestselling author of Life After Life.

In 1940, eighteen-year old Juliet Armstrong is reluctantly recruited into the world of espionage. Sent to an obscure department of MI5 tasked with monitoring the comings and goings of British Fascist sympathizers, she discovers the work to be by turns both tedious and terrifying. But after the war has ended, she presumes the events of those years have been relegated to the past forever.

Ten years later, now a radio producer at the BBC, Juliet is unexpectedly confronted by figures from her past. A different war is being fought now, on a different battleground, but Juliet finds herself once more under threat. A bill of reckoning is due, and she finally begins to realize that there is no action without consequence.

Transcription is a work of rare depth and texture, a bravura modern novel of extraordinary power, wit and empathy. It is a triumphant work of fiction from one of the best writers of our time."

Who else is ready for some more of Kate Atkinson's take on WWII?

I want to start off by saying that I love historical fiction. I thought that Kate did a great job with her research and I loved the concept of the story. The only issue I had was falling in love with Juliet. It took me a couple of chapters to really get into her story and I wanted to love her -- but I just never got there. The rest of the book was fantastic.

The title doesn’t sound like a spy novel, but it was. Just when I thought I had a clue about this book, it took a sharp turn. I really enjoyed it.

Espionage would probably not make my top ten list of things to read about, or even my top 100 list for that matter, so I approached Transcription with a certain wariness. The fact that it is authored by Kate Atkinson was probably the only thing that motivated me to read it in the first place.

The novel opens in 1981, “the year of a royal wedding”, with 60-year-old Juliet Armstrong falling down on London street. Preoccupied with thoughts of her 26-year-old son, and having lived abroad for many years, she likely didn’t look in the right direction for traffic, and has been hit by a car.

After this, Juliet’s story shifts back 30, then 40, years. The 1950 segment also unfolds on a London street. Taking a lunch break from her job at the BBC, Juliet chances upon a man she’d known quite well during the war—a fellow spy, in fact—who now completely denies having known her. The 1940 section, which is a great deal longer explains, among other things, how Juliet first came to know that spy, Godfrey Toby, alias John Hazeldine.

Early on, Atkinson gives us a little of her protagonist’s background. We learn Juliet was raised by a single, dressmaker mother, that she’d been a bright girl and a scholarship student of some promise, but that everything had changed for her at 17 when her mother died. Forced to shift for herself, Juliet went on to attend a second-rate secretarial school, and, with the outbreak of the Second World War hoped to be accepted by the ATS, the Auxiliary Territorial Service, the women's branch of the British Army. Instead, she is called to a strange interview, which she inexplicably lies her way through (even about apparently inconsequential matters such as her favourite painter), and is signed on by the Security Service— MI5, Britain’s domestic counter-intelligence and security agency. She is soon selected by the famous Peregrine Gibbons for a special intelligence operation that is to unfold in Dolphin Square, a large block of private flats (in Pimlico) built in the mid 1930s, shortly before the time of the main action of this story. Eventually Juliet will become a full-fledged spy herself.

It’s quite a long time since I’ve read an Atkinson novel and I really don’t recall her writing being quite so fluffy and flippant. I found Juliet an annoyingly frivolous and lightweight protagonist in whom I could generate minimal interest. I felt I was given entirely too many of her punning and sardonic asides. They quickly wore thin. There are also a glut of period details, which some may regard as producing a more authentic piece. I just felt bogged down by them.

One-third of the way through, I bailed. I was sick of Juliet and frankly didn’t care what became of her. I feel a certain sadness at leaving behind a once-favourite author, but I didn’t like A God in Ruins either. Something has changed, and it may be me.

I am grateful to Net Galley for providing me with an ARC. This is a book I would certainly have regretted spending money on.

This book follows the life and career of an English woman who was recruited as a teenager by M15. Juliet Armstrong's career as a spy begins in blunders, resulting in the death of at least two of the people she encounters early on. The story alternates between early events of WWII and the Communist scare of the 1950s. Juliet's character begins as a naive girl and transforms into a woman unmoored from human relationships or, indeed, any hope for the future.

Despite the ennui and slow pacing of Transcription, Kate Atkinson's research shines through and there is enough suspense to keep the reader turning pages (perhaps skimming sometimes) to the end of the book where there is a twist that upends some of the reader's notions about Juliet..

Full Disclosure--Net Gallery and the publisher provided me with a digital ARC of this book. This is my honest review.

I enjoyed this book very much. It was really a 4.5 but I felt it was confusing at times and hard to keep track of who was who and what was going on. Part of this could have been the intention of the writer, but it caused me to go back and forth and was a bit frustrating for me and therefore couldn’t quite give it a five star rating.

The story starts out in 1950, where Juliet is working at a mundane job in the BBC. Suddenly she sees someone she recognizes from her past, working as a transcriptionist during WW2. What?????? ANOTTER WW2 book!!?!?? BUT....it is more about espionage and secrets and double lives and so not so similar to other books I have read recently.

I LOVED Juliet! She is hilarious and naive and her job and life are interesting to read about.

I enjoyed the ARC and might even reread to see if some of the choppiness gets corrected in the final copy.

First of all, let me begin by saying that this was a challenging read for me. Kate Atkinson has a vocabulary to die for. Luckily I was reading it on my kindle and it was very easy to look up a word that I wasn’t sure of. I kept thinking how wonderful it would be to be able to just toss these words out in casual conversations.

I’d also like to say that the fact that it was a challenging read is not a negative in my opinion. I enjoyed the challenge. This was a book that I read slowly, delved in deep.

The book begins in 1981. Juliet Armstrong has just been hit by a car. She is lying on the ground. She is contemplating the meaningless of some things. Like the Russians - enemies, then allies and then enemies again. The same with the Germans - the great enemy and now friends.

The book then moves alternates time between 1940 and 1950 to tell Juliet Armstrong’s story.

In 1940, Juliet was recruited to be a typist for the M15. She was to type up the conversations of British Fascist sympathizers in a sort of sting operation. I don’t read many books about World Ward II, so this was all very interesting.

In 1950, the war is over and Juliet is now working for the BBC. However, some events from her past are coming to the forefront again.

As I said earlier, this book was not an easy read for me, but it was enjoyable. What especially made the book work for me was the dry sense of humor that wove it’s way through the story. Juliet’s little comments and thoughts always made me smile.

A sometimes slow read, but wonderfully written.

I received an ARC of the book.