Human Croquet

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HUMAN CROQUET
A BLACK SWAN BOOK: 9780552996198

First published in Great Britain
in 1997 by Doubleday
a division of Transworld Publishers
Black Swan edition published 1998

The extract and illustration on pp 443–5 are taken from
The Home Entertainer
edited by Sid Hedges, (Odhams Press). The publishers and author have made every effort to trace the copyright owner and would be pleased to hear from the author and/or artist or their respective estates.

Kate Atkinson has asserted her right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this work.

This book is a work of fiction and, except in the case of historical fact, any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

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For my mother,
Myra Christiana Keech

What the critics wrote about
Human Croquet

‘Vivid and intriguing … fizzles and crackles along …
a tour de force’
Independent

‘Huge, exhilarating, loving and detailed eruption of a novel…
an utterly intoxicating display of novelistic elan … big and joyous,
literary and accessible … storytelling at its buoyant best’
Scotsman

‘A triumph to follow up
Behind the Scenes
with this – astonishing …
clearly an unlimited talent’
Margaret Forster

‘Wonderful … she is an extraordinary writer – earthy and funny,
yet mysterious’
Deborah Moggach

‘There’s a laugh on every second page, often a laugh out loud,
and Shakespeare makes a personal appearance’
Daily Telegraph

‘A novel which will dazzle readers for years to come’
Hilary Mantel,
London Review of Books

‘Atkinson’s passion for England and Engiishness is an unfashionable
and pleasant surprise. Shakespeare’s her hero but I think Chaucer
might give her a wave’
Spectator

‘The author’s voice remains irresistible, her dialogue wry and
imagery fluent’
Time Out

‘A literary tour de force’
San Francisco Chronicle

‘Kate Atkinson won the 1995 Whitbread Book of the Year Prize for
her first novel … Can she produce something as original, readable
and funny as her first book?
Human Croquet
proves triumphantly that
she can’
Irish Examiner

‘A belly-laugh a page … Atkinson is a gifted storyteller’
New
Statesman

‘Atkinson’s wit and her genius for character put a varnish of delight
on the solid carpentry of her ideas. Her novels are remarkable both
in and of themselves, and as evidence of an important emerging
body of work from a brilliant and profoundly original writer’
Daily Express

‘No matter what category
Human Croquet
is ultimately slotted into
by the literary establishment – magical post-modern metafiction?
post-magical realism? post-modern magicalism? – it offers further
proof that Kate Atkinson is off and running in quite a fantastic
direction of her own devising … What makes it so successful is
that it really doesn’t matter if a reader recognizes every gesture in
Atkinson’s literary high-wire act, because the multitude of characters
are defined with such vivid specificity that they – and what happens
to them – matter the most’
New
York Times Book Review

‘With just two novels, Atkinson has added new colour to the
British literary landscape’
Guardian

Also by

KATE
ATKINSON

Behind the Scenes
at the Museum

A surprising, tragicomic and subversive family saga
set in York, Kate Atkinson’s prizewinning first novel,
like all her novels, has a mystery at its heart.

‘Little short of a masterpiece’
Daily Mail

Emotionally Weird

Set in Dundee, this clever, comic novel depicts student life
in all its wild chaos, and a girl’s poignant quest for her father.

‘Achingly funny … executed with wit and mischief
Meera Syal

Not the End of the World

Kate Atkinson’s first collection of short
stories – playful and profound.

‘Moving and funny, and crammed with incidental wisdom’
Sunday Times

Featuring Jackson Brodie:

Case Histories

The first novel to feature Jackson Brodie, the former police detective,
who finds himself investigating three separate cold murder cases in
Cambridge, while still haunted by a tragedy in his own past.

‘The best mystery of the decade’
Stephen King

One Good Turn

Jackson Brodie, in Edinburgh during the Festival,
is drawn into a vortex of crimes and mysteries,
each containing a kernel of the next,
like a set of nesting Russian dolls.

‘The most fun I’ve had with a novel this year’
Ian Rankin

When Will There Be Good News?

A six-year-old girl witnesses an appalling crime.
Thirty years later, Jackson Brodie is on a fatal journey
that will hurtle him into its aftermath.

‘Genius … insightful, often funny, life-affirming’
Sunday Telegraph

This green and laughing world he sees
Waters and plains, and waving trees,
The skim of birds and the blue-doming skies

‘Ode for the Spring of 1814’, Leigh Hunt

BEGINNING

STREETS OF TREES

Call me Isobel. (It’s my name.) This is my history. Where shall I begin?