Book Review: Transcription By Kate Atkinson

London, 1940.

Juliet Armstrong is an 18-year-old with an interesting job – transcribing the conversations of a fascist group that has been infiltrated by MI5.

She is then drafted into espionage work. With her natural ability to lie and placate, this job suits Juliet just fine, she finds the work both tedious and terrifying.

Ten years later, working for the BBC, Juliet is disturbed when some of the people she worked with in the 40’s start making appearances in her new life, neither affirming nor denying their knowledge of her.

A bill of reckoning is due, and she finally begins to realise that there is no action without consequence.

Atkinson returns to historical fiction with authentic characters and a compelling plot line. Transcription is a literary delight, utterly vivid and told in Atkinson’s textbook witty humour, written in a measured but wholly engaging way.

Penguin Random House $32.99