Transcription

Transcription
By Kate Atkinson
Little, Brown and Company, 2018. 352 pages.  Historical Fiction

In 1940, Juliet Armstrong is 18 years old, a bit naive, and reluctantly pulled into the world of espionage.  Tasked with monitoring the comings and goings of British Fascist sympathizers, she discovers the work to be both tedious and terrifying.  After the war ends, she presumes that life is behind her.  Ten years later, Juliet is working as a radio producer for the BBC, when she is unexpectedly confronted by figures from her past.

Sometimes I think we take for granted that World War II turned out the way it did, and it's always refreshing to come across a book that can help place us in the period so thoroughly that we remember the outcome was not at all certain to people living in those times.  This book helped bring alive the fear and uncertainty of a long gone era, while its main character who was certainly flawed fights to keep her head while being swept into matters beyond her control.

BHG