{"id":1604,"date":"2023-01-01T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2024-12-31T21:00:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/?p=1604"},"modified":"2025-01-01T10:00:22","modified_gmt":"2024-12-31T21:00:22","slug":"normal-rules-dont-apply","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/2023\/01\/01\/normal-rules-dont-apply\/","title":{"rendered":"Normal Rules Don&#8217;t Apply"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading has-large-font-size\"><strong>Kate Atkinson<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading has-large-font-size\"><em>Penguin Random House<\/em><\/h2>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading has-medium-font-size\">Otago Daily Times, 2023<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\">Kate Atkinson\u2019s 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\u2019t 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 \u2018spare\u2019 invokes the ire of The Firm\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\">The collection opens with \u2018The Void\u2019, a quasi-horror in which darkness rolls over the land <em>\u201cat 09.12 GTM on Thursday, 4<sup>th<\/sup> May 2028, to be precise\u201d<\/em>, 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 <em>\u201conly on the fringes of other people\u2019s lives, not at the heart of his own\u201d<\/em> whose twist-a-plot trajectory links multiple storylines. Then there\u2019s God\u2019s sister \u2013 and ad agency creative \u2013 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.\u00a0 <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\">Clever, inventive, and delivered in an unmistakably Atkinsonian style, <em>Normal Rules Don\u2019t Apply<\/em> is a delight.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Kate Atkinson Penguin Random House Otago Daily Times, 2023 Kate Atkinson\u2019s 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\u2019t apply. Talking animals, sentient toys, and fairy-tale characters push their way into familiar British settings as if they belong [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[428,370,427,18,375,407],"class_list":["post-1604","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-book-reviews","tag-428","tag-fiction","tag-kate-atkinson","tag-odt","tag-short-story","tag-speculative-sci-fi"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1604","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1604"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1604\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1605,"href":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1604\/revisions\/1605"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1604"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1604"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1604"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}