It’s 20 years since Kate Atkinson’s first short story collection, Not the End of the World. She has filled that time with five satisfyingly unusual detective novels; her Costa-winning masterpiece of alternative existences, Life After Life, and its companion A God in Ruins; plus books set around second world war spying (Transcription) and the 1920s criminal underworld (Shrines of Gaiety).
In this new collection, it is the end of the world – repeatedly. In the opening story, The Void, “darkness rolled over the land. At 09.12 GMT on Thursday, 4 May 2028, to be precise.” The short form has always liberated Atkinson to meddle in myth and magic, and here she melds the fabular and the mundane as the universe blinks, the sun winks out, and those in the open are levelled in a “new Pompeii”. The old man at the centre of the story survives because he’s asleep indoors; his granddaughter because she’s nipped into Waitrose to avoid the rain and is wandering the aisles holding a mini watermelon. But then it happens again, and again, until people can set their watches by “the Dark”. With its nice balance of metaphysical finality and narrative open-endedness, The Void is a strong beginning, reminding us that Atkinson has the control and charm to do with fiction whatever she fancies.
