Behind the Scenes at the Museum

Author/Guide: Kate Atkinson

Why a Booktrail?

1900s: What is behind the scenes of a museum?

ISBN: 978-0552996181
Genre: Coming of Age, Fiction

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What you need to know before your trail

Ruby Lennox was conceived grudgingly by Bunty and born while her father, George, was in the Dog and Hare in Doncaster telling a woman in an emerald dress and a D-cup that he wasn’t married. Bunty had never wanted to marry George, but here she was, stuck in a flat above the pet shop in an ancient street beneath York Minster, with sensible and sardonic Patrica aged five, greedy cross-patch Gillian who refused to be ignored, and Ruby…

Ruby tells the story of The Family, from the day at the end of the nineteenth century when a travelling French photographer catches frail beautiful Alice and her children, like flowers in amber, to the startling, witty, and memorable events of Ruby’s own life.

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Travel Guide

Travel the York of Kate Atkinson BookTrail style

The book is clearly set in and around the city of York. The author herself says she was heavily inspired by The Castle Musuem which appears in the novel and the street of Stonegate. Former inhabitants such as Dick Turpin and Guy Fawkes were born here, are mentioned in the novel and you can visit places associated with them.

“When Lillian left work in the early evening the streets were slick and shiny with rain and the lamps flared yellow giving her the melancholy feeling that always came with the rain and the dark. She’d just struggled to push up her umbrella when the farmer from Saskatchewan came out of the shadows and tipped his hat again, very politely, and said could he escort her home? She put her small hand on his broad arm and held the umbrella over both their heads (he was very tall) and he walked her all the way back to her lodging-house where the landlady, Mrs Raicevic, looked after Edmund after school. By then, Lillian had learned the farmer’s name and she said, ‘Edmund, this is Mr Donner,’ and Pete Donner squatted right down and said, ‘Hello there, Edmund, you can call me Pete.’ Although he never did, preferring to call him ‘Pop’ almost from the day his mother married him.”