Shrine of gaiety, Kate Atkinson, author. Jason Watkins, narrator
This book was a joy to read. The author easily climbs into the heads of her readers as she reveals her characters and gives them life with multiple sides to their personalities. There are dozens, and it can get confusing, but in the end, she knits all the disparate events and characters together and blends them perfectly.
The book is a novel that takes its breath from the real life of Kate Meyrick who was the real owner of dance clubs during London’s club heyday with all of its colorful characters and lawlessness. Using Nellie Coker and her family, she creates a marvelous novel about the heady days of the 1920’s. She examines all of life’s warts and foibles through the characters she creates. Their simple pursuits, hopes and dreams, as well as the way the world contrived to defeat them, is delicately handled with wit, as well as gravity, so that the reader is really immersed into the trials and tribulations of their lives, the good, the bad and the ugly. In addition, quite eloquently, Atkinson seems to shine a light on the many sides of the characters, of human beings, in general, as some thought of as evil turn out to have quite a good side and some who seem quite virtuous, turn out to be quite malevolent.
Nellie Coker owned several dance clubs which her children helped her to run. When hopeful girls, wayward girls, runaways, and the downtrodden, flocked to London to become stars, they often found employment in these dance clubs and were rewarded handsomely or tipped well, so that they sought work there.
Inspector John Frobisher was determined to send Nellie back to prison, convinced that she was a criminal. She had only recently been released after she was framed by Arthur Maddox, the “policeman” she paid to warn her of impending danger. He “failed” to do that.
The inspector engaged the spinster, former librarian, Gwendolyn Kelling, to help him find evidence against the Cokers. Gwendolyn was in London searching for two missing young girls, Florence and Frieda, for a friend. In exchange, he would also help her in her quest to locate the missing young women, though he advised her that in London, it was a monumental task, not easily fulfilled.
Characters enter and leave at will, Nevin and Ramsay Coker, Kitty, Edith, Shirley and Betty Coker and more, often making the reader’s eyes cross and head spin, but still, the book holds the reader fast in its grip as it exposes the criminal world, the underbelly of the gay nightlife in London, with its men who preyed on the vulnerable women, and the women who fell prey to their promises of stardom and success.
In a world filled with those eager to take advantage of anyone who appeared weak, in a world in which the weak were often lacking in skills and/or intellect, in a world with a huge divide between the rich and the poor, the educated and the illiterate, few were capable of understanding how they were being taken advantage of and abused. As Frobisher and Gwendolyn interact, we learn about the exploitation and manipulation of the innocent and vulnerable. We learn that things are not always as they appear. Right is sometimes wrong and wrong is sometimes right. We learn about how chance plays an important part in life’s journey. As we meet all of the characters, the laughing cop, Sergeant Oakes, the gossip journalist, Vivian Quinn, the exploiters of sex, the thieves and the righteous, we see life and the characters in all their glory and shame.