Normal Rules Don’t Apply

Kate Atkinson

Penguin Random House

Otago Daily Times, 2023

Kate Atkinson’s versatility as a writer is on full display in her latest short-story collection, twelve loosely connected tales in which the normal rules most certainly don’t apply. Talking animals, sentient toys, and fairy-tale characters push their way into familiar British settings as if they belong there, along with an American actress whose relationship with the Royal ‘spare’ invokes the ire of The Firm…

The collection opens with ‘The Void’, a quasi-horror in which darkness rolls over the land “at 09.12 GTM on Thursday, 4^th May 2028, to be precise”, killing everything except the birds and the bees unfortunate enough to be caught outdoors when it rolls in. This Void reappears regularly throughout the book, as does Franklin, a character of Brodie-ish introspection and luck who feels he exists “only on the fringes of other people’s lives, not at the heart of his own” whose twist-a-plot trajectory links multiple storylines. Then there’s God’s sister – and ad agency creative – Kitty. Certain she is a better world builder than her brother, she bears more than a little responsibility for numerous suspensions of the natural order. 

Clever, inventive, and delivered in an unmistakably Atkinsonian style, Normal Rules Don’t Apply is a delight.