Behind the Scenes at the Museum is the first novel of Kate Atkinson

Kate Atkinson

Kate Atkinson MBE is an English author.She was born in York, and studied English Literature at the University of Dundee, gaining her Masters Degree in 1974. She subsequently studied for a doctorate in American Literature. She has often spoken publicly about the fact that she failed at the viva ...

. The book covers the experiences of Ruby Lennox from a middle-class English

England

England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...

 family living in York

York

York is a walled city, situated at the confluence of the Rivers Ouse and Foss in North Yorkshire, England. The city has a rich heritage and has provided the backdrop to major political events throughout much of its two millennia of existence...

.

By interspersing flashbacks with the narrative of Ruby's own life, the book chronicles the lives of four generations of women from Ruby's great-grandmother Alice to Ruby's mother's failed dreams.

The story of Ruby's own life is told in thirteen chapters, all written in the first person, documenting key periods in Ruby's life from 1951 ("Conception" beginning with the words "I exist!") to 1992. In between each chapter are (non-consecutive) flashbacks that tell the story from the point of view of one of the other (mostly female) members of Ruby's family—including her great-grandmother Alice, her grandmother Nell and her mother Bunty.

Main characters

• Alice Barker, Ruby's great grandmother
• Nell, Bunty's mother
• Lillian, Nell's sister
• Bunty, Ruby's mother, Nell's daughter
• George, Ruby's father
• Ruby Lennox, Bunty's daughter/Narrator
• Gillian Lennox, Ruby's older sister
• Patricia Lennox, Ruby's oldest sister

Ruby's family tree

Plot and themes

Common themes in the book include the untimely death of children, the effect of the two World Wars on the family, the ultimate fate of characters who "disappeared" from their families lives never to be heard of again, and how the women of the family feel compelled to enter into marriages in which they become unhappy.

The fate of Ruby's family is revealed gradually through the book. A number of revelations, such as the fact that Ruby's sister Gillian dies in a road accident aged 11, are revealed to the reader long before they actually happen. However, other revelations relating the fate of various characters are withheld and revealed gradually throughout the novel, including:

• The fact that Ruby had a twin sister, Pearl, who died in an accident when they were young children, for which Ruby was unfairly blamed (it was actually Gillian's fault). Ruby had lost all memory of Pearl, and so it was not until she was given hypnotherapy
  Hypnotherapy
  Hypnotherapy is a therapy that is undertaken with a subject in hypnosis.The word "hypnosis" is an abbreviation of James Braid's term "neuro-hypnotism", meaning "sleep of the nervous system"....
  
   aged 18 that she remembers Pearl at all. We are given subtle hints of Pearl's existence earlier in the novel (e.g. the doctor looking surprised when Ruby was born as if he wasn't expecting it, the midwife inexplicably saying "Snap," Ruby's mother seeming to possess twice as many pictures of Ruby as of her other children), but because everything is told from Ruby's point of view, we are not aware of their significance.
• That Ruby's great-grandmother Alice, who was believed to have died giving birth to Ruby's grandmother Nell, had actually run away with a travelling French
  France
  The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
  
   photographer in an effort to escape her unhappy life.
• The whereabouts of characters who "disappeared" from family life is not explained until nearer the end of the book: these include Nell's brother Lawrence, her sister Lillian, and Ruby's sister Patricia.
• The interconnections between Ruby's family, and Doreen O'Doherty, the Irish nurse. On the first occasion Doreen is mentioned, she is introduced as the person with whom Ruby's father George is having an affair. In a flashback, we later discover that Doreen fell pregnant to Edmund, Bunty's Canadian
  Canada
  Canada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...
  
   cousin (son of Nell's sister Lillian), a pilot who was over in the UK on a tour of duty during the Second World War  In the final chapter, clues allow us to surmise that the nurse who is present when Bunty dies in 1992 is the daughter of Doreen and Edmund, who Doreen gave up for adoption.

Awards

It won the 1995, Whitbread Book of the Year, beating The Moor's Last Sigh

The Moor's Last Sigh

The Moor's Last Sigh is the fifth novel by Salman Rushdie, and was published in 1995. Set in the Indian cities of Bombay and Cochin , it is the first major work that Rushdie produced after the The Satanic Verses affair, and thus is referential to that circumstance in many ways, especially the...

by Salman Rushdie and a biography of William Ewart Gladstone

William Ewart Gladstone

William Ewart Gladstone FRS FSS was a British Liberal statesman. In a career lasting over sixty years, he served as Prime Minister four separate times , more than any other person. Gladstone was also Britain's oldest Prime Minister, 84 years old when he resigned for the last time...

 by Roy Jenkins

Roy Jenkins

Roy Harris Jenkins, Baron Jenkins of Hillhead OM, PC was a British politician.The son of a Welsh coal miner who later became a union official and Labour MP, Roy Jenkins served with distinction in World War II. Elected to Parliament as a Labour member in 1948, he served in several major posts in...

. The book also won the 1996 Boeke Prize

Exclusive Books Boeke Prize

The Exclusive Books Boeke Prize is a book prize awarded in South Africa, loosely modelled on the United Kingdom's Man Booker Prize, and sponsored by Exclusive Books...

.

External links

• Book Discussion Guide
• Reviews, editions and further information at The Wonderful Unofficial Kate Atkinson Website
• Reading Group Guide information