Status
Available
Call number
Collection
Pages
339
Description
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.
Language
Original publication date
2018
Physical description
339 p.; 21 cm
Other editions
Transcription by Kate Atkinson (Hardcover)
Media reviews
This idea of consequences, and of every choice exacting a price later, runs like a watermark through Transcription, as it did through its two predecessors. At times, the novel is guilty of making its historical parallels a little too emphatic:... Transcription stands alongside its immediate
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predecessors as a fine example of Atkinson’s mature work; an unapologetic novel of ideas, which is also wise, funny and paced like a spy thriller. While it may lack the emotional sucker punch of A God in Ruins, Transcription exerts a gentler pull on the emotions, offering at the end a glimmer of hope, even as it asks us to consider again our recent history and the price of our individual and collective choices. It could hardly be more timely. Show Less
Awards
Dublin Literary Award (Longlist — 2020)
Audie Award (Finalist — Best Female Narrator — 2019)
The British Book Industry Awards (Shortlist — Fiction — 2019)
BookTube Prize (Octofinalist — Fiction — 2019)
Booklist Editor's Choice: Adult Books (Fiction — 2018)
NPR: Books We Love (2018)
Boston Globe Best Book (2018)
Kirkus Reviews Best Book of the Year (Historical Fiction — 2018)
Christian Science Monitor Best Book (Fiction — 2018)