I hope whoever finds this book enjoys it!

Click here to find out more about BookCrossing in the Oxford/Berkshire area

WILD RELEASE NOTES:

At the BookCrossing release walk and picnic today in Abingdon - look out for the books!

If this is your introduction to Bookcrossing, welcome. Please make as few or as many comments about the book as you wish. The book is now yours to do with as you choose. Keep it, pass it on, but please leave the label, so it can keep in touch with us. If you would like to know what happens to the book after you have passed it on, then do join - it's free, private and it's fun!

And if you do choose to join, I hope you'll consider using me molyneux, as your referring member.

Won in the live bookswap today.

Culling Mt Tbr, moving this on.

WILD RELEASE NOTES:

To be taken to the meet-up tonight.

Hello!

If this is your introduction to Bookcrossing, welcome, and congratulations on finding this book! Enjoy reading the book,and I hope you will let us know what you thought - as few or as many comments as you wish. It is now yours to do with as you wish - keep it, pass it on, but please leave the label, so it can keep in touch with us. If you would like to know what happens to the book after it has left you, then do join - it's private and it's fun!
And if you do choose to join, please consider using me, rahar109, as your referring member.

Happy Bookcrossing!

Picked up at Chertsey Meet last night.

This is the second book I have read by Atkinson and I must say that I really like the dry kind of humour with which she peppers her stories, usually in the form of bracketed comments by the narrator. I also like the way her stories (in this book as well as in "Behind the Scenes at the Museum") weave between present and past, setting different scenarios, and the unexpected outcomes at the end: how ever many small storylines you may guess at during the book, it's almost impossible to foresee the big turn at the end...
In "Human Croquet" Atkinson has brought together a cast of excentrically different and out-of-the-normal characters which makes these stories work all the better - and there is indeed more than one story: the present of the narrator; the past in the narrator's early childhood (still told by the same person); the same past but before or outside the narrator's experience (additional information on her parents presented in the completely different third person style); and an even older past where the narrator changes to another person in her ancestry living at the same place. The stories all intertwine, not only through the link of family and location, but also through repeating character traits, situations and ideas where the true happening in one story often corresponds to the imagined or pretended happening in the other. It is very skillfully done!
The incongruous title refers to a social game, often talked about in the book but never played, and to my surprise the idea and rules of it were explained in the appendix, even with a drawing. Another little oddity that made me smile.

Picked up at the Chertsey Meet Up this evening. I have a feeling I may have read it before - we'll see!

I'm afraid I never got to read this. I took it on a trip to Spain and France, during which a friend was taken ill, so I left the book with him in hospital in Perpignan. I'm not sure if he will read it, so it may be left in the wild in the South of France. Let's see if it is found.

I pickep up this book in the South of France, where I'm from, and will now pass it on in Amsterdam where I now live