Human Croquet: A Novel – Kate Atkinson

Condition : Good.
Doubleday, 1997, Large-format Paperback – Fiction – 349 pp.

A New York Times Book Review 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.

A dark yet moving exploration of a young girl’s past begins on Isobel Fairfax’s sixteenth birthday, when she comes to learn the truth about her strange family and the mysterious disappearance of her own mother. A stunning feat of imagination and storytelling from Kate Atkinson, Human Croquet is rich with the disappointments and possibilities every family shares.

“Wonderfully eloquent and forceful. Kate Atkinson goes at the same pace in her second novel as she did in her first…brilliant and engrossing” – Evening Standard
“Vivid and intriguing…fizzles and crackles along…a tour de force” – Independent
“Vivid, richly imaginative, hilarious and frightening by turns” – Cosmopolitan
“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” – The Scotsman
“Human Croquet offers further proof that Kate Atkinson is off and running in quite a fantastic direction of her own devising.” – Katharine Weber, The New York Times Book Review
“A literary tour de force.” – San Francisco Examiner & Chronicle