Just occasionally you come across a novel that achieves that metaphorical feat of blowing your socks off. Kate Atkinson's Behind the Scenes at the Museum is one such. It is brilliant. That it was a first novel defies belief. Simply staggering - not just one of the the best novels I have read this year but one of the best I have ever read.
A modern (and better?) stylistic cousin to Tristram Shandy, the digressive narrative is carried along with winning skill. Its penultimate paragraph builds to a philosophical crescendo with one of those sentences you just wish you had conceived yourself:
In the end, it is my belief, words are the only things that can construct a world that makes sense.
Tomorrow we reach the crescendo of this calendar. Given how I have raved about Advent 23, you may (correctly) judge that you are in for a real treat tomorrow.
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