This book is what I would call a slow read - it seems as though little is happening and yet, everything is happening.
The main character appears to be a puzzle and yet you know someone just like him. He is part of a community, yet fights it, even when a family comes to live in his large home - which is a former residential school.
The residential school looms as though it is a character in this book - looming, always there, as life goes on in the village and on the indigenous reserve. And you witness this man’s transition - from his old life in the corporate world, to part of a tight community. Absorbing, and unforgettable.
Jeremiah Camp, a.k.a. the Forecaster, can look into the heart of humanity and see the patterns that create opportunities and profits for the rich and powerful. Problem is, Camp has looked one too many times, has seen what he hadn’t expected to see and has come away from the abyss with no hope for himself or for the future.
So Jeremiah does what any intelligent, sensitive person would do. He runs away. Goes into hiding in a small town, at an old residential school on an even smaller Indian reserve with no phone, no Internet, no television. With the windows…
Kate Atkinson is a very talented writer - she weaves together many lives in this book, from the main character, Gwendolyn, to Nellie, the unrepentant nightclub owner, to the young girls who get caught up in running to London to escape their mundane and sometimes abusive homes.
We see the top layer of society, the royalty, as they mingle with underworld kingpins, and see what can happen to unsuspecting young victims.
I kept going back to the story to see what would happen to young Freda who wants a career on the stage but learns that that is only possible through the gatekeepers - men who want to use young girls - but also what is possible in London when you suddenly have money, like Gwendolyn. I love how Atkinson is able to weave all these characters and their lives together.
'Atkinson on her finest form. A marvel of plate-spinning narrative knowhow, a peak performance of consummate control.' OBSERVER
'This is the perfect novel for uncertain times.' THE TIMES
'I can think of few writers other than Dickens who can match it' SUNDAY TIMES
'Brilliant' RICHARD OSMAN
'Kate Atkinson is simply one of the best writers working today, anywhere in the world' GILLIAN FLYNN
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1926, and in a country still recovering from the Great War, London has become the focus for a delirious new nightlife. In the clubs of Soho, peers of the realm rub shoulders with starlets, foreign dignitaries…
The Thursday Murder Club is a collection of seniors living in a seniors’ apartment complex.
Murder, mayhem, and lovely relationships allow this group to solve murders and have fun at the same time. I found myself laughing out loud at the antics and unexpected turns of the plot. The characters are finely drawn, all different, all essential to this group of entrepreneurs who set out to solve murders. I highly recommend this book, the start of a series.
A New York Times bestseller | Soon to be a major motion picture from Steven Spielberg at Amblin Entertainment
"Witty, endearing and greatly entertaining." -Wall Street Journal
"Don't trust anyone, including the four septuagenarian sleuths in Osman's own laugh-out-loud whodunit." -Parade
Four septuagenarians with a few tricks up their sleeves A female cop with her first big case A brutal murder Welcome to... THE THURSDAY MURDER CLUB
In a peaceful retirement village, four unlikely friends meet weekly in the Jigsaw Room to discuss unsolved crimes; together they call themselves the Thursday Murder Club.
After a fourteen-year marriage to Duncan - a bully who’d been terrorizing and controlling her for all the years they had been together - Karen E Lee thought divorce was in the cards. But months after telling him she wanted that divorce, Duncan was diagnosed with cancer - and eight months later he was gone. Karen hoped her problems would disappear with Duncan’s death; instead, she found that without his ranting, raving, and screaming taking up space in her life, she had her own demons to face. Luckily, Duncan had inadvertently left her the keys to her own salvation - a love of Jungian psychology and a book that was to be her guide through her journey to healing.
