Normal Rules Don't Apply: Kate Atkinson

Normal Rules Don't Apply is a collection of eleven interconnected short stories by award-winning, best-selling British author, Kate Atkinson. While the connections are sometimes quite vague or tenuous, and readers may be scratching their heads as to how the story of the middle-aged dispirited divorcée whose bloated stomach turns out to be an immaculate conception, or the tale of the angst-ridden toys in the sadistic child's playroom, or the story of the soap opera star who falls in love with a Prince, fit into the scheme of things, the way other stories mesh in becomes much clearer towards the end.

Certainly, the first story, The Void, which features what seems to be a Universe Reset that takes a lot of lives, both animal and human, and occurs with alarming regularity, will likely leave readers puzzled until they read the penultimate story.

Characters (or iterations of them), names, objects and themes appear in each other's stories, so F Franklin Fletcher, a would-be writer with a fascination for the myriad of possible paths in life and a plan "to recreate the fractal in fictive form – an endlessly bifurcating narrative, based not on making a choice but on making all possible choices", features in five of the stories.

Initially, he makes a tidy sum betting on a horse race at the grey horse's suggestion (a bit-player in a different tale has less luck with a talking horse), then finds himself in a relationship with a beautiful daughter in the wealthy Kingshott family, celebrates a lightning-fast engagement before things take an adverse turn. When "He would swim in the Kingshott gene pool like a happy, sun-kissed otter" he later decides "Perhaps he wouldn't be such a happy otter if Connie's sisters were in the gene pool with him, circling like sharks."

Meanwhile, the ghost of the personal assistant to a Kingshott sibling floats around observing what happens in the aftermath of her murder. The story that a vicar's teenaged daughter describes about the disappearance of the family's baby son is interspersed and entwined with the plot of a folk tale from an old book found in the attic: The Stolen Child, that involves a Queen desperate for a child, a witch in a forest cottage, a loyal hound and a cursed princess.

In another thread, Franklin narrowly escapes hooking up with the Kingshott daughter, makes a fortune in a different way, meets the cursed princess with hound, and learns the fate of the baby son. The stories feature faithful dogs, some of which talk; horses that talk; violets; strawberry smoothies; a talking fox; a golden ring inside a fish; and the sister of god, working in an advertising agency, getting a chance to do a better job of genesis than her spoilt younger brother has done so far.

All this, wrapped in some marvellous descriptive prose: "He had become reconciled to the fact that no matter how many times the wheel of fortune turned, he would always find himself stuck on the underside, like gum on a shoe", and even if the reader isn't quite sure, by the final chapters, of just what, exactly, has occurred, the journey to this point is, nonetheless, a thoroughly entertaining and enjoyable one; with Kate Atkinson writing, how could it be otherwise?

This unbiased review is from an uncorrected proof copy provided by NetGalley and Random House UK Transworld.