In this collection of interconnected stories by the Life After Life author Kate Atkinson, dogs and horses talk, ghosts watch TV and the world is in the grips of The Void, a daily event where everything goes dark for several minutes and anyone who is outdoors is extinguished.
In Gene-sis, humans are presided over by “sister of God” Kitty, an advertising executive tasked with playing God after her brother resigns from the job; while in Blithe Spirit, Mandy, a former PA to a politician, watches her own autopsy from the afterlife and learns how she died from a gunshot to the head. Mandy’s existence as a ghost brings its frustrations but it allows her to study human behaviour from a rare and unearthly vantage point. Among the book’s recurring characters is Franklin, a producer on a popular soap opera who once dreamed of writing his “Great Novel” and who has been unlucky in life until a talking racehorse gives him a winning tip.
The narrator is the Noughts + Crosses actor Paterson Joseph, whose deep tones are well suited to the book’s apocalyptic atmosphere. Meanwhile, the writing revels in the juxtaposition of the fantastical and the mundane, rarely more so than when a young mother survives The Void because she is in Waitrose contemplating buying a watermelon. There is a rich seam of melancholy in these stories, as reality gets bent out of shape and we observe ordinary people in extraordinary circumstances, trying to take control of their lives.
• Normal Rules Don’t Apply is available via Penguin Audio, 5hr 37min
Further listening
My Name Is Barbra
Barbra Streisand, Penguin, 48hr 14min
The acclaimed performer reads her epic memoir, in which she recalls her early life in Brooklyn and her six-decade career spanning stage, screen and the recording studio.
How They Broke Britain
James O’Brien, Penguin, 10hr 23min
The journalist and LBC stalwart narrates his book documenting a 13-year Tory reign characterised by scandal, self-interest and world‑beating ineptitude.
