Product Description

A New York Times Notable Book of the Year

Part fairy tale, part mystery, part coming-of-age novel, this novel tells the story of Isobel Fairfax, a girl growing up in Lythe, a typical 1960s British suburb. But Lythe was once the heart of an Elizabethan feudal estate and home to a young English tutor named William Shakespeare, and as Isobel investigates the strange history of her family, her neighbors, and her village, she occasionally gets caught in Shakespearean time warps. Meanwhile, she gets closer to the shocking truths about her missing mother, her war-hero father, and the hidden lives of her close friends and classmates. A stunning feat of imagination and storytelling, Human Croquet is rich with the disappointments and possibilities every family shares.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #211985 in Books
• Published on: 1997-08-21
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 352 pages

Features

• ISBN13: 9780312186883
• Condition: NEW
• Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
• Click here to view our Condition Guide and Shipping Prices

Amazon.com Review
Human Croquet is a game in which some people act as hoops while others propel a blindfolded "ball" around the course. Though the game is never actually played in Kate Atkinson's remarkable novel, Human Croquet, the parallels between plot and pastime are undeniable. Atkinson, winner of the 1995 Whitbread Award in Britain, tells the story of Isobel Fairfax and her older brother, Charles. The children's parents vanished when they were young, leaving them to the care of their grandmother, now dead, and their Aunt Vinny. Recently their father has returned with "the Debbie-wife" in tow, and they all live in Arden, the family's ancestral home built on the foundations of the original manor house that burned to the ground in 1605. According to family legend, the first Fairfax took a wife who mysteriously disappeared one day, leaving in her wake a curse on the Fairfax name. More than 300 years later, Fairfax descendants are still struggling with this painful legacy.

Atkinson's novel is obviously not rooted in dull reality. Narrator Isobel has an uncanny knowledge of past and future events; Charles is obsessed with the concept of parallel universes and time travel; and a faery curse hangs over everybody. Fortunately, Kate Atkinson is a masterful writer who manages to keep her world of wonders in check. Human Croquet is no ordinary novel, and readers who venture into the Fairfax universe are in for a magical ride.

From Library Journal
This ambitious and unusual novel concerns the nature of time, memory, and, most poignantly, identity. Young Isobel and her brother, Charles, are abandoned by their parents to the loveless care of a sour aunt, stern grandmother, and evil schoolmaster. They spend seven years yearning for the truth about their parents' disappearance and for their mother's return. It is their father, however, who returns?with a new young wife. The home of the protagonists is built on a site where, in the late 16th century, parallel events took place, and the novel warps and wends from past to present to future. British author Atkinson (Behind the Scenes at the Museum, St. Martin's, 1995) here focuses on Isobel's 16th year in 1960. Dopplegangers abound; people long-dead manifest themselves to the living. As the fantastic and the mundane combine almost seamlessly, incest, puppy love, and dysfunctional families mix to darkly comic effect. For most fiction collections; get Atkinson's first book, too.?Judith Kicinski, Sarah Lawrence Coll. Lib., Bronxville, N.Y.
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Kirkus Reviews
Atkinson's follow-up to her Whitbread-winning Behind the Scenes at the Museum (1996) is a self-consciously smart and mildly amusing family saga. Isobel Fairfax, age 16, narrates the busy goings-on at Fairfax Manor, an ostensibly cursed mock-Tudor in a suburb in northern England--although the events she describes may well be fantasies, embellished with tidbits from Shakespeare and Ovid and whatever else she's reading in school. The Fairfax family, as Isobel presents them, is a wildly dysfunctional cast of caricatures: There's sour Aunt Vinnie, who's always draped in cats; brother Charles, who's obsessed with alien abductions; and ineffectual dad Gordon and his plump second wife Debbie, who imagines that the sausages she's about to barbecue are moving about on their plate. When Isobel is not deep in lustful thoughts about Malcolm, the local gynecologist's son, she time-travels and has brief and remarkably uneventful interludes in earlier eras. And both she and Charles desperately miss their long-disappeared mum, Eliza. World War II hero Gordon plucked glamorous Eliza from the rubble of a London bombing, then brought her home to the Manor, where his widowed mother and Vinnie criticized her every move. Although besotted with his wife, Gordon couldn't break with his mother, and the marriage was strained. During a picnic, Charles and Isobel were left alone, only to toddle upon the body of their mother: Did Gordon kill her before disappearing for seven years to avoid the law, leaving his kids to repress the memory and get brought up by Vinnie? This is only one of many hyperventilating mysteries that Isobel sifts through: violent deaths, stolen babies, and sexual peccadilloes galore crowd Fairfax family history. Isobel's semi-jaded wisecracking serves up some mild laughs, but this exercise in over-deliberated cleverness, while never dull, is ultimately more exhausting than engaging. (Author tour) -- Copyright ©1997, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Customer Reviews

Riveting Reading
I bought this book after reading Behind the Scenes at the Museum. I really like Kate Atkinsons writing style.

This is a story of much complexity and I couldn't put it down. The story is about a 16 year old girl, Isobel Fairfax and her story is sad, humorous, disturbing and compelling. I was transfixed with genius of the writing. You are taken through the past and present and are never sure what is real and what is not but before the book ends you quickly drawn to the reality of it all.

Finding the truth of what happened to Eliza, Isobels mother, is especially interesting. This book also goes into the world of all the people involved with Isobel. A lot going on here.

It is in much the same style as Fall on Your Knees, by Ann-Marie Macdonald.

Didn't give it 5 stars because I could have probably done without the Shakespeare part, but it was really a gread read!!!

As good as, if not better than Behind The Scenes.
I read Kate Atkinson's first book somewhat reluctantly - "Behind The Scenes At The Museum" - and then read it all through in delight and fascination. If anything, Human Croquet is even better. A tighter narrative, a closer grasp upon the characters in her book, and an incredible wit and talent for characterisation have combined to greatly improve upon Atkinson's style. Behind the Scenes was an awesome debut. Human Croquet is a marvellous book. I fell instantly in love with the characters, even the ones you aren't really sure you're supposed to like, but do anyway (Aunt Vinny is an absolute black delight.). It explores realities and dreamlands, plays around with our expectations and thoughts, and eventually everything falls into place. You MUST re-read this book at least three times. It's the only way you will ever realise just what a superlative work of art it is - complex, deep, and very, very clever....

I have just discovered that Kate Atkinson's next book is out in June! O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!

Anyway... there is so much I could say about this book - it is a devastatingly devious whodunnit, that you don't even realise is a whodunnit until you realise it IS one; it is a extremely funny, barbed and ironic book; it is a character driven piece as well as a plot-driven piece. It is one of my top 10 books of all time. The only other book I can think of that comes even close to Kate Atkinson's style in this book is Jostein Gaarder's "The Solitaire Mystery"

Creative, unusual, challenging -- WOW!
Kate Atkinson has a quite unusual and creative style of writing. If you like very linear,unambiguous fiction, she is definitely not for you but if you are up for a challenging and extraordinary read, check this, her second novel, out. It's hard to describe "Human Croquet" without sounding unbearably pretentious or giving away too much of the plot. Simply put,"Human Croquet" is the story of Isobel Fairfax, a teenager growing up in northern England in the early 1960s -- but the book goes far beyond the traditional coming-of-age story, with its time-bending, imaginative plot. History is intermingled with the present, dreams with reality, and alternate realities are at war with what's actually happening in Isobel's life. The characters are vivid and real, the writing is funny and witty and fresh, and Isobel's story and voice grip you from the beginning. Thoroughly enjoyable, and well worth the trip.