I loved "Behind the Scenes at the Museum", and am really looking forward to this one.

...

This book did not disappoint - truly funny and inventive. Read almost nonstop (family required a little attention, but sent the dependent to her grandparents for the day so only had to deal with minor domestic issues of washing, folding and changing Bach for Handel on the cd-player).

On its way to genevalove in Shanghai.

Just got this today--thanks so much peggysmum! And thanks for the postcard, too.

This was a delightful, highly entertaining book that more than once had me laughing out loud (which got me some strange looks at the Starbucks, I can tell you.) I loved the aspiring authors in Effie’s creative writing class—the extraordinarily prolific fantasy chronicler, the strictly autobiographical Andrea/Anthea, plus the efforts of the Professors McCourt, one writing an incomprehensible expression of angst called The Expanding Prism of J, the other indulging in the purple prose of a romance novel. Not to mention Effie’s own mystery-in-the-making, The Hand of Fate. Thrown in some random literary criticism and a recurrent refrain of Henry James’ gratuitously slamming Middlemarch, and I felt like I was back in college myself (did I mention I was a humanities major?)

I loved Kate Atkinson’s earlier books, particularly Human Croquet (which also happened to be one of my first wild catches). She’s one of the few authors who can make magic realism work—I say that as someone who normally can’t stand that sort of thing. Scattered throughout this story are sly hints and glimpses of the magic of words, playful interweaving of reality and the text it’s written on. It’s so skillfully and cheerfully done, I can’t bring myself to resent it even a little bit.

All in all, a great book—I absolutely must track down Atkinson’s new one, I think it’s called Case Histories, and read it as soon as possible. Thanks again, peggysmum, for passing on such a remarkable book—I’ll make sure it finds a new reader soon!

I passed this book on at Saturday's Shanghai Bookcrossers meetup.

Very enjoyable!

CAUGHT IN SHANGHAI CHINA