Kate Atkinson is a good writer. She knows how to tell a good story, to form complicated and unexpected plot lines and create characters with depth and feeling and whose lives you care about. If you have not yet made her acquaintance, then you are in for some good reading, if you just haven’t read this book, then you need to get on it right away!

Juliet Armstrong was 18 when she was recruited by MI5. It was 1940 and everyone knew war was coming, they just didn’t know when.  At first Juliet didn’t really even know she was working for MI5, she was just transcribing audio recordings, but slowly she realized that the people who met with the undercover MI5 agent in the apartment next door were pro-German fascist sympathizers and as the weeks and months went by she began to understand that MI5 was monitoring these groups to make sure they were not agitators or spies. The work was tedious, hour after hour of mostly meaningless conversations that needed to be typed and then reviewed by her boss and then sent on into some file cabinet in MI5’s headquarters. Oh, there were a few moments when she was able to be more than a glorified typist, but in the end, when the war ended, it was a relief to put this part of her life behind her.

Ten years later, Juliet sees someone on the street who looks exactly like the MI5 agent whose voice she had transcribed over and over again and the memories of that time come flooding back. She now works as a producer of children’s radio programming at the BBC. Occasionally, over the years, she has been  asked to to do some small favors for MI5, but mostly she has been retired from that line of work. But the reappearance of that man triggers both fear and curiosity in Juliet and over the next few days she begins to realize that it was not a coincidence at all.  As Juliet tries to uncover what is happening, she realizes that although another war, dangerous and deadly, is being fought behind the scenes, her actions in the past might be more consequential than she could have ever imagined.

Brenda’s Rating: *****(5 Out Of 5 Stars)

Recommend this book to: Marian, Sharon and Keith

Book Study Worthy? Yes

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