Yet perhaps the reader who is in the middle of the book should hesitate before downloading this guide. (You can actually find one at /kateatkinson14/behind.htm.) The saga spans four generations of the narrator's family, with a cast too large to be held easily in the memory. Really attentive readers of Atkinson's novel might themselves feel in need of just such a family tree. Throughout the novel, lost family members turn up in the story. Patricia has herself been long-lost, walking out of the family home after having a child as a teenager, and turning up many years (and several chapters) later in Australia, married with two children. Patricia's "thirst for genealogy" is shared by her creator, for the novel fictionally recovers the lost stories of Ruby's relations. O n almost the last page of Behind the Scenes at the Museum, Atkinson's protagonist and narrator Ruby Lennox tells us that her sister Patricia has paid someone to draw their family tree - "a huge, chaotic arboretum".
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