Normal Rules Don't Apply

Susan's Review

Fans of Kate Atkinson’s novels will enjoy her new collection of short stories. It satirises a range of targets, including the self-entitled rich, the British monarchy, celebrity culture, the advertising industry and TV soap operas. The collection offers deftly drawn recurring characters, some laugh-out-loud moments and weirdly unexpected elements. Throughout, the concept of what Atkinson calls the The Void is used as both a 
comic and chilling reminder of human frailty and irresponsibility. A highly engaging read.

Publishers Reviews

The first story collection from Kate Atkinson in twenty years, Normal Rules Don't Apply is a dazzling array of eleven interconnected tales from the bestselling author of Shrines of Gaiety and Life After Life

In this first full collection since Not the End of the World, we meet a queen who makes a bargain she cannot keep; a secretary who watches over the life she has just left; a man whose luck changes when a horse speaks to him.

With clockwork intricacy, inventiveness and sharp social observation, Kate Atkinson conjures a feast for the imagination, a constantly changing multiverse in which nothing is quite as it seems.

'What really binds these stories is their underlying theme, which has perhaps always been Atkinson's true subject- the nature of storytelling itself' - Times Literary Supplement

'Life in all of its surreal, tragic and comic glory is perfectly captured within these pages' - Red

'Sublime' - Good Housekeeping

'Dazzling' - Reader's Digest