Shrines of Gaiety
by Kate Atkinson
Pub Date: September 27, 2022
Doubleday
Thanks to the author, publisher, and NetGalley for the ARC of this book.
Another great read from Kate Atkinson. Perfect for fans of Peaky Blinders. * historical fiction at its best.
Kate Atkinson was born in York and now lives in Edinburgh. Her first novel, Behind the Scenes at the Museum, won the Whitbread Book of the Year Award and she has been a critically acclaimed international bestselling author ever since.
With her unique Dickensian flair, Kate Atkinson gives us a window in a vanished world. Slyly funny, brilliantly observant, and ingeniously plotted, Shrines of Gaiety showcases the myriad talents that have made Atkinson one of the most lauded writers of our time.
Great book~
5 stars

An atmospheric historical fiction set in turn of century England. The story takes place during the roaring 20s against the backdrop of London's gritty underworld and glitzy nightclub scene. A family saga told through multiple POVs, the pacing can be a bit slow at times and the characters difficult to follow. Beautifully written. Overall this novel will appeal to lovers of historical fiction that enjoy character driven narratives.

Devoured it! I loved Kate Atkinson's writing; it was evocative and transporting without being purple. 1920s London is one of my times in history, so I am a sucker for a story that takes place then and there. Shrines of Gaiety certainly scratched that itch, but also hit all of the right notes. Normally I don't care as much for stories that alternate between different characters pov's, but it worked for me here.

I didn't hate this book. I wouldn't even go as far as saying I *disliked* it, but I didn't love it. While I didn't have trouble keeping track of the not-small cast of characters, my biggest complaint is that the amount of time invested in them didn't pay off in the end. Another occasional hang-up: the focal character changed from chapter to chapter, sometimes to give a different point of view of the same 'scene' from the previous chapter, but sometimes jumping forward or back a bit to a completely different scene; it wasn't always immediately clear where/when each chapter was starting off from.

Complaints aside, this book was certainly well-written, and clearly thoroughly researched. I'm still glad I read it, and I'll continue to seek out any future Kate Atkinson titles as they're released.

Shrines of Gaiety by Kate Atkinson showcases this author's storytelling talents. The book is filled with characters who could have their own standalone novels. And the story moves at a rapid pace. Chapters end in cliffhangers, there are plenty of red herrings and plot mis-directions. A very fun read that will be highly recommended for historical fiction fans, mystery readers and book clubs.

Kate Atkinson is one of my favorite authors for good reason. Her books never fail to entertain and sometimes educate. This historical novel does both.

The story unfolds over several days in 1926 London as seen through the adventures of four main characters: Nellie Coker, newly freed from prison and eager to restore her nightclub empire; Freda Murgatroid who has run away to London with her friend Florence, bent on finding stardom; Gwendolen Kelling a friend of Florence's family who has promised to find and return Florence; police inspector John Frobisher who is determined to clean up police corruption and put Nellie Coker back in prison. How their lives intertwine as they each pursue their goals is what turns this book into an engrossing story, Basing Nellie Coker on a real life female nightclub owner in post WWI London added to the realism of the story. A tough business woman, Nellie is ever protective of her brood of six children with ambitions for them as well as her business ventures.

I did find the book a bit confusing at the beginning as the narration slips back and forth in time with little warning. Once the characters and their background are fleshed out, however, the book moves along as the characters interact and their plans and plots change in relation to their circumstances. Atkinson's light touch of humor throughout keeps the characters and their situations palatable even during some not so savory situations. All-in-all, this is a very enjoyable read.

Thank you NetGalley and Doubleday Books for an advance copy of this book. The publication date is September 27, 2022.

I know Dickens isn’t to everyone’s taste. All those characters and all those crisscrossing plots and, yikes, the coincidences! But I love his style and I am a sucker for Dickensian books like Kate Atkinson’s Shrines of Gaiety. I love the sprawl of these books, how they seem to contain entire worlds. Most of all, I love the fully realized characters in settings that are rich enough to climb into and walk around in. Shrines of Gaiety takes us into London, 1926, and a collision of characters who are plotting with and against each other. This book is absolutely stunning.

Shrines of Gaiety opens with the notorious Nellie Coker walking out the gates of Holloway prison. She’s just served a six-month sentence for a little light law-breaking. Now free, she can return to her half-dozen nightclubs scattered around London and her almost half-dozen children, who’ve been left to tend the empire in her absence. The opening chapters introduce all of those children, plus other characters like the delightfully capable Gwendolen Kelling, the morose Detective Frobisher, and the scrappy Freda Murgatroyd. There’s far too much plot in Shrines of Gaiety to sum up, so I won’t even try. Instead, I’ll say that there are missing girls, crooked cops, revenge, and lots of betrayal.

Even though there’s so much going on in Shrines of Gaiety, it’s the sort of book that carries you along. All of those intersecting plots are presented through the various characters’ eyes, so that you understand everyone’s motivation. Atkinson is particularly good at pacing everything based on how information is revealed. Several of the characters—Kelling and Frobisher in particular—believe that they have the upper hand for a long time, thinking they know more than the people they’re spying on. The reversals of power with each revelation are simply breathtaking.

There are some missteps at the end. They come straight out of Dickens’s playbook of coincidences. After all of the beautiful plotting, several of the loose ends are wrapped up really quickly. I can forgive those, however, because I liked the rest of the book and its characters so much. Gwendolen was an absolute joy to read and I cheered Nellie every step of her sneaky way. (Never underestimate an old lady!) In spite of those missteps, I would still heartily recommend this to fans of immersive historical fiction.

Very good historical fiction. Great sense of place and characters. Story began a bit slowly for me and did not dive as deep as some Atkinson books.

Shrines of Gaiety is another great historical novel from Kate Atkinson. The world of this novel feels so immersive and her unique voice really shines through. I loved following the Coker family through their cutthroat world, even as Atkinson showed us the huge differences in class and status in post-Great War London.

I absolutely love Kate Atkinson books and this one did not disappoint! The characters are so fully developed even though we spend such a short time with each of them. The chapters rotate focusing on a single character and their storylines intersect in obvious and surprising ways. Each chapter ends with a delightful twist or quippy line that makes you want to speed through the next perspectives to get back to the twist, which made me absolutely fly through this 400 page book! I had my favorite "POVs" (they're not really points of view because it's all third person omniscient) but none of them I dreaded reading as is sometimes the case with multiple characters.

Overall an excellent historical litfic. Nellie is an absolute icon.

I love Kate Atkinson’s books, and I was so excited to get a chance to read her latest work.

Shrines of Gaiety is beautifully written and well researched. It really transports readers to the 1920’s with all its glitter and grime. Despite the huge cast of characters and many plot lines to follow, it is an absorbing book that I found hard to put down.

As she often does, Atkinson focuses on themes of war and crime, but it didn’t feel like a heavy read. I love her Jackson Brodie books, but they can weigh me down a bit. I expected this to be similar, but it was not.

I loved it, and I think other fans will be delighted as well. For readers who haven’t picked up Atkinson’s books before, this seems like the perfect place to start.

Kate Atkinson does not disappoint. There is an eccentric cast of characters set in the post-war 1920s London nightclub scene. Nellie Coker owns several of these nightclubs which are rife with corruption, crimes and kickbacks. She is being investigated by police officer Frobischer aided by Gwendolyn Kelling, a wonderful character who is a librarian turned amateur sleuth.. The novel is engaging and hard to put down.

So close to 5 stars.

Set over a few days in the London of 1926, this novel has a rich and deep sense of time and place, several interwoven plots, and a whole raft of complex and vivid characters. My only grumble is that the author seems to have lost interest in the last few pages and just finished the damn thing.

The connective tissue for the multiple plot threads is the decadent and slightly seedy nightclubs run by matriarch ‘Ma’ Coker and her children. Mrs Coker is just out of jail and her many enemies, on both sides of the law, are circling her empire. Meanwhile, stage-struck young Freda Murgatroyd and her homely friend Florence Ingram have run away from their homes in York to make their fortunes as dancers in the West End and Gwendolen Kelling, a friend of Florence’s family, has come down to find them. Gwendolen connects both with a straitlaced police inspector and Ma Coker’s eldest son, Niven.

The novel moves back and forward in time, reliving scenes from different perspectives, creating a wholly believable and multi-dimensional world. It’s an inward-looking and self-centered society with tendrils that creep out into Bright Young Things parties (the hilarious and apparently real-life baby party), the death of young women in the Thames, and the lingering after effects of the first World War. But, as the author notes, this was also the year of the General Strike, which has little impact on our characters’ lives.

There is a mystery of sorts that is resolved without detective work and the perpetrators receive their just, if unorthodox, desserts. The plot, however, is more driven by the vultures circling around the Coker night clubs, and by corruption both physical and financial.

And I loved it right up to the final few pages where the author just wraps everything and everybody up with a peremptory briskness that jars with the rest of the novel. It felt like she had got to the end and couldn’t really be bothered making the effort to finish in keeping with the world she had so skillfully built.

Of course, I do thoroughly recommend Shrines of Gaiety. I have enjoyed many other Kate Atkinson novels and I’m pretty sure she knows what she’s doing, but this ending left me unfulfilled.

Thanks to Doubleday and Netgalley for the digital review copy.

In SHRINES OF GAIETY, the peerless Kate Atkinson spins a complex, spirited tale of Bright Young Things--a mix of her early novels and her crime fiction. The opening pages are a little slow--but the payoff is there, so bear with the author as she delivers a broad cast of characters. Atkinson is a treasure and this novel is highly recommended.

My thanks to Doubleday and to Netgalley for the opportunity and pleasure of an early read.

This starts a little slowly because the cast of characters is large, and there are a handful of plots that Atkinson deftly braids together. Once it gets going, it's hard to put down. Smart and sharp and just a whole lot of fun.

Gwendolyn Kelling, librarian turned amateur sleuth, is my favorite character in a very long time.

Thanks to NetGalley for the advance copy.

This is a fun and unique read. It is very unlike the author’s other books (which I love), but even so, it will not disappoint. It took a little time to get into the story, but it was completely worth reading on. I loved all of the characters and was intrigued by Niven and Edith the most, even though their roles were unfortunately small. Freda was also a great character. Just don’t go into this book expecting something similar to Life After Life!
Thank you Netgalley for a ARC.

Based on the life and times of Kate Meyrick, who for many years was the queen of Soho’s clubland, this romp through 1920s London features a riotous ensemble of characters. Central to the story is Nellie Coker, the owner of a popular group of nightclubs, pitted against police officer Frobisher. As the two, through their respective charges, keep an eye on each other, young women are mysteriously killed. Atkinson’s strength in wordplay–an evening with someone needs a drink as a “leavening”--makes up for stop-and-go pacing. A fun adventure into the seedy underbelly of one of the world’s famous cities.

This is is a delicious Kate Atkinson novel - a mix of the historical pleasures of Life After Life and Behind the Scenes at the Museum and the smart crime structure of her Jackson Brodie mysteries. She colorfully captures swinging London during the Bright Young Things era, and the criminal underbelly of the prohibition-era nightclubs. For a crime novel that involves a lot of horrific deaths of young women, it's actually not very dark, but is instead full of fascinating characters and has a strong sense of joie de vivre. Her best and most readable book since Life After Life.

I loved reading Shrines of Gaiety. The wit of the writing, complexity of the structure, and the vivid characters made it a joy..In a season of big name books it is sure to stand out as outstanding. I would recommend this book to anyone male or female old or young literary or fan of pulp, it hits the sweet spot that makes it universally enjoyable..

There were the shrines to memorialize the men lost in the war, and there were the shrines of gaiety were people could lose themselves in wild pleasure and excess to forget the war.

1920s London drew the rich and the powerful to the nightclubs in Soho. And from the suburbs and countryside, young women came to the city dreaming of the stage and fame, only to be reduced to living by their wits, or beds, or if they were lucky, as paid dancers at a night club. The money and tips were good. The recent epidemic of missing dancing girls is not.

Upon the death of her mother, Gwendolyn the librarian discovers she is wealthy. She leaves her quiet life to search for her best friend’s missing daughter who ran off to London with her best friend, sure they would be dancers on stage. Gwendolyn is plucky, an optimist, a risk taker. She has no fear. She was a nurse during the war, already she has seen the worst. She has freedom and money and is keen to embrace life.

Searching for the missing Florence and Freda, Gwendolyn becomes entangled with two men. The proper, melancholy Chief Inspector Frobisher who enlists her to infiltrate Nellie Coker’s clubs. And Niven Coker, war veteran and Nellie’s eldest son. Frobisher is married to a woman bearing the scars of war, and Niven has no plans to settle down.

Nellie is a self-made woman who has built an empire of nightclubs, from the low-life, drug-addled dens of inequity to the Amethyst where the Prince of Wales and film stars hang out, sometimes joined by local street gangs. She loves sweets and wears furs in all weather, matronly and plain. Her appearance belies her iron will and shrewd business sense. Also, she isn’t afraid of getting her hands dirty, especially when protecting her empire.

The Coker children are rich in things and poor in parental love. Edith, her eldest, is the family business bookkeeper, her mother’s second in command. She is entangled with a police officer who gets kickbacks from Nellie, but is up to no good. The younger daughters Betty and Shirley may be Cambridge educated, but they are vacuous and vain. Nellie most despairs of the youngest, Kitty. Then there is Ramsey, an addict with plans to write a novel, confused about his sexual orientation. The eldest of the clan, Niven was a sniper during the war. Like Gwendolyn, he is sick of death and war.

Freda discovers that fame comes with a price, and the naïve Florence disappears. Meanwhile, Gwendolyn searches for the girls.

Based on real people and places, capturing a society reeling from a devastating war and seeking oblivion in living in the moment, Shrines of Gaiety has a Dickensian scope, delving into a criminal underworld that takes advantage of starry-eyed girls and the world-weary. It’s filled with wit and humor, mystery and suspense, betrayals, and plot twists. It’s a ripping good read.

I received a free egalley from the publisher through NetGalley. My review is fair and unbiased.