I’m always impressed with Kate Atkinson’s writing. This collection of loosely connected short stories, by turns happy and sad, is a virtuoso performance of imagination, drawing on the story-telling traditions of Ovid and the Thousand-and-One-Nights.
The opening story is based on a discrepancy. Two young urban single women, Charlene and Trudi, seem to be living in a world of luxurious consumerism against a background of earthquake, explosions, and sniper fire. The collection’s title brought to mind Skeeter Davis’s tear-jerker hit. Don’t they know?
It turns out they do know, but they are shutting the fact out by force of imagination. But that is only revealed in the last of the twelve stories. The stories in between are tales of magic realism based on antique myth. They led me to revise my original understanding of the title. For “end” means not only a conclusion but also finitude or boundary. The stories suggest that the day-to-day world we take in with our senses is not all there is.
But then, when the book title forms the final sentence, spoken by Trudi to Charlene, the original sense comes back with the full weight of irony. It’s a sentence we all use to ourselves and each other after some physical or emotional skinned knee. And it’s even true of the world at the end of the book, but not for these two starving, plague-stricken young women. A downer of a conclusion, it haunted me for hours after I finished the book. ( )

Kate Atkinson writes novels in which everything ties together in the oddest manner possible, so it should not surprise me that she can write a collection of short stories that appear to have nothing at all in common, and yet wind around each other in the strangest and best possible ways. This isn't even a collection, this is more a novel in unrelated parts, and to date may be my favorite of her books, which is really saying something, as I'm pretty sure Behind the Scenes at the Museum is one of the best books ever. ( )

I registered a book at BookCrossing.com!
http://www.BookCrossing.com/journal/12548979

I read this quite some time ago and forgot to note my thoughts here. I love Atkinson and I remember liking these short stories but I honestly do not recall them individually any more. ( )

Ik ben nooit zo van de verhalenbundels maar deze is beslist een uitzondering op die regel. Alle verhalen zijn op kleine prachtig uitgewerkte manieren met elkaar verbonden. Sommige personages spelen de hoofdrol in het ene verhaal en worden alleen maar genoemd in het andere verhaal. Het eerst verhaal en het laatste verhaal zijn duidelijk de hoekstenen van het hele boek. Erg goed gedaan zoals van Kate Atkinson kan worden verwacht. ( )

A series of loosely interconnected short stories, most of which are wonderfully whimsical. ( )