Mirren's been long raving about this collection of stories which apparently have a Buffy connection.

Presumably no connection to the Judy Blume book of the same name!

Discussion begins July 1st.

Ack! Pressure! Now I hope you all like them; my non-virtual book club did, at least.

Have people managed to find this book? I have ... I liked it well enough, but I'd prefer someone else to start discussion as I don't have a lot to say about it.

One strange issue for me was that one story is dedicated to someone I know, or knew anyway, at college (and he was a bit of an arse, actually). Not only that, the story seems to be based on him so it was just - weird.

Wait, which story was that? I'll have to take another look.

This is an interesting collection of stories. Individually, some of them would just have me saying "wha?" but taken together, they develop an internal logic and mythology. I'm... not sure I like it, but I don't dislike it. It's unusual, to say the least.

The one about doppelgangers.

How weird … I’ve had a similar experience when someone I knew based a novel on our workplace. A number of the characters were very recognisable (although most were clearly works of fiction). In fact several of them were treated in what I thought was a rather snide and unfair way—particularly because some throwaway comments about them added nothing to the story and would only have meant anything to their friends and colleagues. (Although maybe I'm just bitter that I wasn't in it.) I wonder how common those kind of insider references are?

Anyway, Not the end of the world. I’m obviously a fan. I liked it because it was imaginative and whimsical, yet not too whimsical or trite. I liked the way that the stories hung together. I liked Atkinson’s descriptions and the brightness of her language—her comparison of a cat’s testicles to furry maltesers is one I think I’ve mentioned before. I also like explorations of gods or mythical figures living amongst us; it seems to be rather zeitgeist-y (like American Gods or The Minotaur takes a cigarette break)—maybe it’s the contrast between the sacred and mythic and the mundane that appeals to me. And I’ve always been fascinated by Greek mythology and the Metamorphoses, so blend them in with Buffy, lists of wonderful words and post-apocalyptic Scottish towns and you’ve basically pressed all my buttons. I’ve read it a couple of times and I can imagine it being picked up every year or so in my future—it already feels like an old friend.

I actually read this before I read any of Atkinson’s novels, but afterwards I got them all from the library. I think her first, Behind the scenes at the museum works best; the narrator has an original voice, and I was hooked from the first line, “I exist!” as the narrator describes her conception.

I liked the way the different pieces fit together, and I got settled into the language, though it was a little hard for the first piece. I did keep having the feeling that perhaps I was Missing Something, though, which is a problem I run into fairly commonly with literature--I'm just well-educated enough to think I ought to be reading for Deeper Meaning, but not well-educated enough in how to do that to actually, you know, do it.

I remember particularly liking the Persephone one, and the one with the boy who was the son of a fish.