A sulphurous drollery animates Shrines of Gaiety, Kate Atkinson’s ensemble portrait of Soho’s underworld between the wars. It continues a run of novels – Life After Life, A God in Ruins, Transcription – that put a quirkily self-conscious spin on period drama, their focus much sharper on the intricacies of character than the forces of history. But Atkinson is an expert juggler of both.
The year is 1926. Nellie Coker, matriarch and nightclub proprietor, has just been released from
