• ‘Transcription’ Review: Heard During Wartime

    A young woman makes her first foray into the world of espionage and finds it filled with comic incoherence.

    Kate Atkinson’s 10th novel begins in 1981 with what we presume is the death of its main character, Juliet Armstrong, now age 60. She has been hit by a car in a London street, her last words being—or seeming to be—“It’s all right.” And there, in brief, are key elements in Ms. Atkinson’s fiction: sudden death, resignation masked as reassurance, and the seemingness of things. Soon enough the story expands to include other familiar Atkinsonian ingredients: fate’s caprice, balked communication, reverberation of past events, and remembrance of Englishness past—all riding on a subtle current of wry humor.


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