Kate Atkinson shows her versatility with this remarkable book of short stories. The stories themselves are connected, sometimes very subtly, and follow her usual style of tremendous writing. Not as emotionally involving as her novels, but a collection that the reader can either dip into or read in one sitting. I will warn you however that you will want to read these stories more than once. Thank you to the author for many hours enjoyment and thanks to the publisher for an advanced copy for honest review.

Following on from the monumental and epic Shrines of Gaeity, Kate Atkinson returns with a new collection of interlinked short stories. There is much to admire here - and much to laugh at too (Atkinson has some great one liners). There is a mix of genres here too - all of which she shows mastery of - and though not every story will have the same impact as the other - and your favourite is unlikely to be mine - this is a very fine collection to savour. Fab stuff! Thank you to the publishers and Netgalley for the ARC.

The warning "Normal rules don't apply" is given in Spellbound, one of the more obviously fairytale-like of the stories in this book, but it could well apply to any of them. Talking dogs (and horses), a virgin birth (not, as I'm afraid it's described, an Immaculate Conception...), an observant ghost, a catastrophe that strikes anybody (and anything) caught outside when it comes - these stories are filled with the fantastical, the unlikely and the menacing. They're also filled with the down to earth, the familiar and even the touching. Take Franklin, for example, a character who appears in three or four of the stories. Despite the limited space available, Atkinson gives a vivid picture of his rackety life - his mother, notorious for her role in a sex scandal; his absent father and flailing career history (until he gets lucky and lands a job with hit soap Greenacres - which also features in several of the takes). Franklin is a channel to the mysterious, encountering said talking horse (and dog), a deeply strange family, and finally an escapee from another story - but he is himself as normal, as ordinary, as anyone else would be trying to live down a minor celebrity of a parent. Like other characters here, Franklin doesn't invite the weird, it just happens to him and he has to cope with it - just as later in the book, Pamela, an undistinguished former teacher faced with an extraordinary event, grits her teeth and tells herself it's her time to shine. I liked Pamela, feeling she very much approaches life as, I hope, I would. Or take Mandy, that observant ghost, who uses her apparent ability post-death to perceive what's still going on to track down the facts behind her death. In the course of this Mandy tells her life story, which is shrewdly set out, very ordinary, but truly fascinating. (Mandy gets her happy ending, and even the company of a dog - there are many of them in this book!) And sometimes, the weird just... wanders in. As you read this collection you'll spot, perhaps, situations and individuals you've already seen. Connections will spark and you'll know - sometimes with delight, sometimes with horror - what is going to happen next (perhaps). It's emphatically not one story but themes recur, alternate paths may be being explored and unlikely links are made. The atmosphere is at times something like Atkinson's Life After Life and A God in Ruins, though without quite the same space for exploration and development of characters. There is an explanation, sort of, for the coincidences and links, lending a distinctly metaphysical touch to the book. It adds its own charm but the rest of the stories still very much stand in their own terms, every one of them. My favourite would, though, I think be Existential Marginalisation, a rather dark take on Toy Story. The stories are all great fun, and if, as I did, you read the excellent audiobook version narrated by Paterson Joseph, I think you'll agree that it's just a perfect listening experience.

Kate Atkinson’s Normal Rules Don’t Apply is a dazzling, mischievous collection that reminds us why she is such a singular talent. Opening with the brilliant and hugely unsettling ‘The Void’, Atkinson creates a doorway into a multiverse of stories that echo, refract and quietly converse with one another long after each piece has ended. The links are deftly handled, rewarding the reader with moments of recognition and surprise and this is what I loved most about this collection. What makes these stories so sublime is Atkinson’s extraordinary control of language: precise, elegant and often laugh-out-loud funny, yet capable of conjuring whole lives and vivid worlds in a handful of lines. Her wit is sharp, humane and gloriously unexpected. Inventive, playful and deeply intelligent, these stories bend reality while revealing profound truths about love, loss, chance and identity. I consider this book a collection of modern fairy tales; a new retelling, enhancing those written by Grimm and Lang. A masterclass in short fiction from a writer at the height of her powers. If you haven’t discovered Kate Atkinson’s talents yet, here is a great place to start. My favourite read of 2026 so far.

When I reviewed ‘A God in Ruins’ by Kate Atkinson I wondered whether it was a good book if, after reading it, you had to go upstairs to make your teenage kids beds for them, pick up the dirty washing, fold their clothes and then burst into tears? The answer, of course, is yes, it was a classic. I did something even stranger after reading ‘Normal Rules Don’t Apply’, I started reading it again, right from the start, immediately, without a break. I wouldn’t often do that! Although at one level, this book is a series of short stories with vaguely overlapping characters and plots, at another it’s busy unpacking the metaverse, playing with multiple shifting realities, sorting out God and religion, while – all the time – gently mocking the absurdities of human existence. The stories kick-off with The Void about a kind of bump in the space-time continuum which kills a lot of people for five minutes every day but happens to save people who are inside Waitrose! You don’t find out what’s going on here until the climax of the book. In between, there’s a talking horse, a fairy story which crashes through reality and a sad interlude about the life of cuddly toys and dolls and what it might be like to be dead. It’s the talking dogs you need to worry about! Some things persist. There’s a monkey called Mitch who keeps cropping up and a more central character called Franklin who has drifted through life and then drifts through the stories. The book is very funny, not only at the expense of Waitrose shoppers but also vicars, women of a certain age, soap operas, film stars and anyone else who finds themselves and their peculiarities in Kate Atkinson’s gaze. But it’s also a book to make you think about the nature of reality, the flimsiness of existence and the obvious fact that if we lived in an ever-changing series of alternative universes we wouldn’t have the faintest idea what was happening. It’s quite simply a work of genius from an outstanding writer. (Normal Rules Don’t Apply is published by Penguin Random House. Thanks to the publishers and to NetGalley for an advance copy.)