Random Things Tours: Shrines of Gaiety by Kate Atkinson

There are so many stereotypical ways to describe the strength of a book taking you from one environment to another, across centuries and historical events. Some books actually do it, through a kind of wordly teleporting from your couch to streets of far away cities and ages back in time, getting to know characters that sound and behave as real as your blood and flesh neighbours. This is what happened to me while reading the Shrines of Gaiety, but award-winner bestseller writer Kate Atkinson. 

I am well familiar with the streets of London, including Soho where the most of the action is taking place, but couldn´t figure out by myself how it used to look like during the 1920s, in between one big bloody war and another. The best time to enjoy life at its fullest because there may be not tomorrow.

A short mention before getting deeper into the content: The cover it´s outstanding. I had access to the book in e-format, but had the chance to see some videos featuring it and it has that Art Nouveau touch that I love for the sake of the beauty. I am always pleased to see edition houses investing considerably not only in delivering a flawless story but also an inspiring visual format.

Returning to the book story, it features a brave woman Nellie Coker, the head of a nightclub empire in the Soho´s underworld. Inspired by Kate Meyrick, a real life queen of clubs, Nellie is also managing a complex family with six kids, most of them involved at certain degrees in the nightlife business. And, indeed, nightlife in London and everywhere is a hard business, especially during troubling times when people of all backgrounds crave for entertainment and an alternative to an increasingly grey reality. Thus, there is a highly in demand social function the clubs are supposed to fulfill.

Action-craving people - as me sometimes - may be slightly disappointed by the rather horizontally oriented story: more on describing characters and ways than keeping the reader under the pressure of the unexpected turns of the action. However, it is a reminder that not so long ago, I honed my social observation skills based on novels by Dickens and Zola, so typical for ages of great social upheaval like the historical period featured in the book.

The miscellany of characters is each and every one recomposing a mirror of a society on the brinks of a nervous breakdown. In the rhythm of jazz, the notes of the society are made and remade at high speed. Society, like us, humans, doesn´t tolerate fast change easily. Thus, the unfolding drama and dramatism of the situations featured and the need to have some law-and-order representative like detective Frobisher, like many books set in Germany´s Weimar Republic do as well.

It´s hard to leave a book like Shrines of Gaiety because it is so precisely written that one feels like being part of the literary story as well (honestly, leaving Soho for good is not always an easy decision). It may explore topics similar with other writers and books across decades of the last century, but it does it in a very unique way. It is a reminder of how literature can have a powerful social impact and how history and historical facts in general could be creatively explored with a fresh touch no matter how many times.

Rating: 4.5 stars

Disclaimer: Book offered as part of the book tour but the opinions are, as usual, my own