I’m going to let you in on a little secret: I have a masochistic streak when it comes to books. Sometimes, when I find a book I really want to read and think looks like something I’ll love, I buy a copy and save it. I let it sit there on my shelf, sometimes for months, perversely denying myself the pleasure of reading it. And then finally, when the anticipation and wait have become too agonizing, I succumb. Sometimes this tactic backfires, but then other times I get lucky and it pays off in spades.

I got a copy of Behind the Scenes at the Museum last spring and promptly shelved it. I have looked at it from time to time, contemplating actually reading it, but it wasn’t until this week that I finally did, using it as my 1990s selection for the By the Decade Challenge. (As an aside, I was surprised to learn that the book was written in 1995 but it took me more than 10 years to learn of its existence.) Ruby Lennox narrates her own story, amply supplied with footnotes detailing the various escapades of her family, a family chock full of pain, loss, sorrow and regret. Traveling back and forth from the present to the past, the characters’ lives are overlapping layers of the magical and the mundane – in short, a typical family, one that contains its share of secrets. One of these secrets is in Ruby’s own past, a secret so painful that she is not even aware of it. Ruby is decidedly the antihero of her tale, an intensely likeable youngster often chided by her family for being too “clever” – even when she’s not trying – a girl who is unsure of her place in her family and the world at large.

With empathy and wit, Kate Atkinson deftly weaves the stories of the various family members together, revealing how one life affects or alters another. We meet quite a few people throughout the narrative, each one contributing to this marvelous chronicle of one family’s past, present, and future. Happily, we aren’t left wondering ‘what happened to so-and-so?’ and even the most incidental character or event is given closure, making for a thoroughly satisfying ending to a fabulous book – my favorite thus far this year.