Behind the Scenes at the Museum

Book excerpt: The acclaimed author’s “startlingly original . . . poignant and beautifully wrought portrait” of a girl’s growing awareness of her dysfunctional family (The Seattle Times). Winner of the Whitbread Book of the Year Ruby Lennox begins narrating her life at the moment of conception, and from there takes us on a whirlwind tour of the twentieth century as seen through the eyes of an English girl determined to learn about her family and its secrets. Kate Atkinson’s first novel is “a multigenerational tale of a spectacularly dysfunctional Yorkshire family and one of the funniest works of fiction to come out of Britain in years” (The New York Times Book Review).