Insight about the Footnotes
The newest cover of Behind the Scenes at the Museum.
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I have read another, more recent book by Kate Atkinson called Life After Life. It has a fractured narrative like Behind the Scenes at the Museum, therefore I kind of knew what to expect when we were given Behind the Scenes at the Museum to read. The way Behind the Scenes at the Museum was narrated, which included footnotes in order to understand the actions of characters in the present through the past, was a very interesting aspect of the novel. Normally, when footnotes are found in a novel, they are read right after the sentence in the novel that comes with a footnote. In this book, the footnotes were like chapters, however. I read them like chapters. It did not occur to me that the reader might have been expected to read them like true footnotes. I felt that would have been unconventional and weird to read chapters out of order so I read it like a regular book.
I think Atkinson intended to comment on people’s tendency to jump forward and think about the future. She might have written the footnotes as chapters to illustrate how we do not follow straight paths and wait patiently for the next part of life to begin or for an exciting event to occur. Personally, I tend to not be patient but I did not jump to the footnotes. Maybe this is what Atkinson wanted us to do. I am curious to see if the book would have made even more sense or that I could have gotten a different sense of the events if I read the footnotes like footnotes are usually supposed to be read. |
A quote from kate Atkinson
This statement by Kate Atkinson was taken from a video interview recorded for 'Meet the Author'. She explains her thoughts about Behind the Scenes at the Museum. The rest of the statement and more about the novel can be found on Atkinson's website.
"Running under this book, I was always keen on the structure that - because there's always something behind the closed door, because there's always a secret - each chapter has a footnote, which is a glimpse into the past of this particular family. In a way they look random, but they're not. They build up a kind of tapestry of this family's past.
I think what I hadn't realized until I'd finished the book was I wanted to write about what it was like to be English, and I think it's not the greatest picture of what it's like to be English, but it was what English history has meant on a personal note for people. So Behind the Scenes at the Museum is, in a way, behind the propaganda, it's behind the official history, it's how it felt to be a lower middle class family with all the great events going on around you that don't impinge on you, unless you happen to be killed by them - which several of the people in this book are.
And it's a book about women. The men tend to die young or get killed off. It's a book that I think is ultimately a triumphant book because it's about the self triumphing over all the terrible things that happen to any one individual in life.
It's a book for which I have a great fondness, and which, I think, was the basis of everything else I write. It was a way of me finding my own voice."