Brilliant.

A heady brew of crime, romance and satire set amid the sordid glitz of London nightlife in the 1920s . . . Shrines of Gaiety sees Atkinson on her finest form . . . A marvel of plate-spinning narrative knowhow . . . a peak performance of consummate control.

Sharp, witty and fiendishly plotted … you don’t so much as read it as surrender to it

Seduction, betrayal and larger-than-life characters that will have you hooked until the last page.

Kate Atkinson is on deliciously acerbic form in Shrines of Gaiety … exposing the underbelly of London nightlife in the roaring 20s

Atkinson has a plotter’s mind: intricate, clever, satisfying. Shrines of Gaiety is all about life’s tangled lines, intersections and synchronicities…The kind of fine-tuned observation that can produce an enormous, vibrant cast is quite something and I can think of few writers other than Dickens who can match it. Shrines of Gaiety is engrossing and fun, powered by subtle skills.

This book is one to savour, for the energy, for the wit, for the tenderness of characterisation that make Atkinson enduringly popular.

As vividly filthy, populous, dangerous as anything described by Dickens, but writing is closer to Thackeray’s… Atkinson is a novelist of unrivalled immediacy, authority, and skill.

Kate Atkinson is simply one of the best writers working today, anywhere in the world…she’s a global treasure… [Shrines] is set during Jazz Age London, in all its fizzy madness and desperation for the new, the better, the hustle. Atkinson has a magician’s ability to switch a reader’s mood within a few paragraphs, and as dark as her stories can get, within them always shines a beacon of humanity.

Atkinson is a thoughtful writer with an astute understanding of 20th-century social history. This is the perfect novel for uncertain times, when comfort of a particularly English and nostalgic stripe is required.