Not The End Of The World

Description

What is the real world? Does it exist, or is it merely a means of keeping another reality at bay? NOT THE END OF THE WORLD is Kate Atkinson's first collection of short stories, Playful and profound, they explore the world we think we know whilst offering a vision of another world which lurks just beneath the surface of our consciousness, a world where the myths we have banished from our lives are startlingly present and where imagination has the power to transform reality. From Charlene and Trudi, obsessively making lists while bombs explode softly in the streets outside, to gormiess Eddie, maniacal cataloguer of fish, and Meredith Zane who may just have discovered the secret to eternal life, each of these stories posits a skewed reality glimpsed out of the corner of an eye. When the worlds of material existence and imagination collide, anything is possible...Vibrantly contemporary, plausibly implausible, refreshingly original, NOT THE END OF THE WORLD is a timely meditation on mythology and transformation, and demonstrates Kate Atkinson to be one of the most inventive and entertaining of modern writers.

Kate Atkinson won the Whitbread (now Costa) Book of the Year prize with her first novel, Behind the Scenes at the Museum. Her four bestselling novels featuring former detective Jackson Brodie became the BBC television series Case Histories, starring Jason Isaacs. Her 2013 novel Life After Life won the South Bank Sky Arts Literature Prize, was shortlisted for the Women's Prize, voted Book of the Year for the independent booksellers associations on both sides of the Atlantic. It also won the Costa Novel Award, as did her new novel A God in Ruins (2015). She was appointed MBE in the 2011 Queen's Birthday Honours List, and was voted Waterstones UK Author of the Year at the 2013 Specsavers National Book Awards.

Exceptional...Sharp, witty and completely compelling * Daily Mail * I can think of few writers who can make the ordinary collide with the extraordinary to such beguiling effect...left me so fizzing with admiration * Observer * An exceptionally funny, quirky and bold writer * Independent on Sunday * Moving and funny, and crammed with incidental wisdom * Sunday Times * Inventive and moving, these are truly tales for the new millennium * Good Book Guide *