Behind the Scenes at the Museum

Behind the Scenes at the Museum
First edition cover
Author(s)	Kate Atkinson
Country	United Kingdom
Language	English
Genre(s)	Novel
Publisher	Doubleday
Publication date	March 2, 1995
Media type	Print (Hardcover)
Pages	288 pp
ISBN	ISBN 0-385-40607-X

Behind the Scenes at the Museum is the first novel of Kate Atkinson. The book covers the experiences of Ruby Lennox from a middle-class English family living in York.

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.

Contents 1 Main characters 2 Plot and themes 3 Current edition 4 Awards 5 External links

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 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 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 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.

Current edition

• Picador (1999) ISBN 0-312-15060-1

Awards

It won the 1995, Whitbread Book of the Year, beating The Moor's Last Sigh by Salman Rushdie and a biography of William Ewart Gladstone by Roy Jenkins. The book also won the 1996 Boeke Prize.

External links

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