Not the End of the World Review

I am not and never have been a fan of short stories — so why do I keep reading short story collections? We may never know. However, I am a big fan of Kate Atkinson, so I took the plunge and I do not regret it. The stories themselves are connected, some more obviously than others. They are realistic stories with a garnish of bizarreness surreality that makes you sit up and pay attention even more, hungry to see how it all fits together and where the characters end up.

No matter my personal aversion to short stories, Kate Atkinson’s writing style is like a crisp New Zealand sauvignon blanc. What made me love Life after Life and A God in Ruins runs through this collection. The magic is not lost in this different medium and Atkinson’s motif of creating stories within stories continues in this collection.

I would highly recommend this Decameron-reminiscent story collection. Combing through and finding all the connections between stories is as much fun as journeying through the actual narratives. This collection is fabulously imaginative and compelling and I really enjoyed reading it.