One was Joan Miller, an undercover agent for MI5 who infiltrated a group of British Fascist sympathisers known as “the Right Club” in the early years of the Second World War. Transcription was inspired by two real-life figures. Like the hollowed-out Loeb’s Classics used to smuggle heroin in Atkinson’s 2008 When Will There Be Good News? (another brilliant title), there is much more that is thrillingly dangerous in this book than its appearance might suggest. But its off-puttingness is thematically appropriate, as this is a book about the unexpected way in which excitement can intrude into a life that looks squarely set for unleavened mundanity. Her 10th, Transcription, a spy thriller of sorts, has easily the least inspiring title of any of her books indeed, I am hard-pressed to think of any spy novel with a duller title. Behind the Scenes at the Museum, Human Croquet, Emotionally Weird and Started Early, Took My Dog – the titles would be the best thing about her novels, if the novels didn’t happen to be very, very good. TS Eliot said that Nathaniel Hawthorne “had even the minor token of literary genius, the genius for titles”, and the same is true of Kate Atkinson.
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