Paradise: Camp Fire

This weekend I joined seven of my Monterey County Search & Rescue team members in Oroville, Butte County (80 miles north of Sacramento), to work with some five or six hundred other volunteers and professionals—fire, law enforcement, and National Guard—surveying the devastation that is the now mostly former town of Paradise, population just shy of 27,000. That town and a few other smaller communities were slammed by a fire on Thursday, November 8. Here is a Landsat 8 image of the fire from that morning, about four hours after it erupted at dawn:

A friend of mine who lives in nearby Chico (pop. 93,000), and was warned that evacuation was a strong possibility there too, said the sky was dark as midnight. The fire was so fast moving, and evacuation routes out of Paradise so few and constricted, that many people were forced to leave their cars on the road and try to make it out on foot. Many died. As I write, the death toll stands at 79—making it the deadliest fire in California history—and 700 remain missing.

Our task as SAR was to inspect each burned property, looking for fatalities: long bones, skulls. The officials' goal is to begin opening sections of town up to residents so they can come in and see whether their home is still standing (some 13,000 homes were destroyed), collect valuables (if any remain), and . . . well, mourn. The town of Paradise as they all knew it is no more. Whether and how it will be rebuilt remains to be seen—though during the two days we spent there, PG&E was already hard at work installing new telephone poles, so they, at least, seem to reckon the town will rise again.

Here are some photos I took during my two days there. Me, I stayed close to our Zone 7 CP (command post), helping our group leader, Casey, with "scribing": writing down radio traffic, updating the map. Occasionally I'd accompany fellow volunteer Nadene to liaison with our workers, seeing if they needed anything. I did no searching per se (though I did last year at the Tubbs Fire, so I know what's involved: it's hard work). And thankfully, our teams found nothing in the way of human remains—though that said, it's hard to be sure, with all that devastation. You're basically looking at a couple feet of rubble that used to be a two-story house, and sometimes a fallen metal roof covers much of it. Fire will continue to go into the community to move those roofs aside, and more searchers will take another look. It's a long, difficult process.

(As always, click on the photos to view them large on black.)

Morning briefing at base camp, a thriving city of several
hundred, complete with showers and laundry.

Each morning everyone signs in and
assignments are made. This is one search zone's
sign-up area (and our own Detective Ken Owen
there on the right).

A couple dozen anthropologists were standing by
to inspect any bones that we found. They crafted
a crude poster showing what bones and teeth look like
after they've been subjected to extreme heat.

The gentleman here, a Native American from Paradise, was
blessing anyone who wanted it. Nadene did. He waved a
burning smudge stick over the person while speaking
words of courage and peace. Later, during the briefing,
after a chaplain had led us all in prayer, heads bowed,
this man led us in another prayer, and he invited us to look
to the sky, where the great spirit dwells. It felt very consoling.

Our Zone 7 CP: working out of the truck. Deputies Knutsen
and Condon, and Nadene. The map was our go-to planning tool.

Cell service was awful for ATT. Josh painted
a magic circle for Casey to stand in. More
seriously, the orange spray paint is what teams
used to mark a property as having been inspected.

Studying a search section on the map.

We had three groups of National Guardsmen, who all
traveled in that big bus. Here they are suiting up at our
staging area. They were great workers—gung-ho,
efficient, and organized. We also worked with SAR
teams from Madera, Del Norte, Tulare, and Yuba counties.

At last year's Tubbs Fire, we worked with little to no PPE
(personal protective equipment). The authorities apparently
learned something in the meantime, and all searchers were
outfitted with Tyvek suits, booties, and respirators, plus
they wore their own helmets and work gloves.

Note the undamaged children's toy. It is always so perplexing
to see such devastation, and in the middle of it, some
random item—an ornamental garden deer, a jet ski,
a green dinosaur, a campaign sign—in perfectly
fine shape.

An exercise bike and swing set

Vehicles are always so eerie, since they're so familiar:
melted wheels, exploded belted radials, and bare, burnt
metal inside.

Children at play no more. One of the things that
struck me throughout the burn zone was that the
trees were mostly fine—not even charred.
Here is a story about the science of that, in the case
of this particular fire.

The telephone poles, on the other hand, all
burned, from the bottom up a few yards—
which left the tops dangling on power lines. While
we were in Paradise, PG&E was traveling through
town cutting all the transformers down and carting
them away.

There are many stories on social media about all
the animals that were found—many, many
cats, also pigs, donkeys, goats, dogs, and, yes,
chickens. Nadene keeps chickens herself, so she
was glad to have a sandwich to feed these three,
who seemed especially happy about the cheese!

Eric, Nadene, and a Madera County volunteer,
with the tools of the trade

At the end of the shift, the teams marked Xs on the
map to indicate the structures they had cleared.
These are our National Guardsmen. Awesome group.

Lew, Eric, and Nadene

With a search section almost complete, Nadene
and TJ discuss where to go next

This was the Paradise Church of Christ.
Adjacent to our staging area.

A couple of vintage cars

A persimmon tree survived the inferno,
making for a spot of beauty

The smoky drive back to base camp

The lake at base camp

And . . . base camp: basically, a fire camp, with tents
accommodating eighteen—but we were only seven, so
had plenty of room to spread out. Heater and
overhead light. Posh! And the food! It's far from the
wilderness search & rescue experience many of us are
used to. But . . . I suppose we shouldn't get used to it.

Our team is continuing to head up to Oroville and Paradise over the next week as the searching continues. Five of us are there now. Rain is forecast for the next few days, and it remains to be seen how that will affect the search efforts. It's a sad, hard task, but I feel privileged to have been in a position to assist. It's an act of witnessing, for sure. I wish the very best to all those people who have lost their homes—never mind those who lost friends and loved ones, or who still don't know. I can't imagine going through something like that. Or no: I can begin to, thanks to experiences like this. My heart goes out to the good folks of Paradise, Magalia, Concow, and the other communities devastated by the Camp Fire.

Book Report: Triptych

31. Karin Slaughter, Triptych (2005) (11/15/18)

The other day a voracious reader I know on Facebook mentioned the newest Karin Slaughter book, how she was really looking forward to diving in. I looked up Karin Slaughter on amazon, and she got consistently high ratings—with many people saying they especially liked her Will Trent series.

That's all I knew when I ordered Triptych, the first of the Trent books (4.4 stars on amazon, and a solid 4 on Goodreads).

I wish I'd read a little further. Because in truth, this book left me feeling dirty: not only is the subject matter harsh, even sadistic, but the storytelling is sloppy. Suspension of disbelief? Not so much. Motivation? Who needs it.

I imagine Slaughter daydreaming: let's get three guys who sort of mirror each other in various ways, whether by childhood neglect, or relationship to crime, or simple relationship—let's make a couple of them cousins, yeah. Let's have them all be variously emotionally unavailable. Let's have one of them get framed for murder, and twenty years later when he gets out of prison, he discovers that someone has stolen his identity. Let's have hookers who get bloodily killed, and teenagers who lose their tongues (literally). Let's sprinkle a few lawyers in.

And let's conceptually frame it all around a painting—a triptych, "three canvases hinged together to make one image when it was open, another image when it was closed. He had always assumed she liked the duplicity of the piece . . . one thing inside, another out." Yeah, that makes it art.

I did finish, because I kept hoping for some sort of good twist, or redemption, or something. It did not come. All that came was violent acting-out, and continued emotional bereftness. Though the chihuahua Betty did find a home.

I will not be reading any more Karin Slaughter.

And now, I need to find a book that fills my soul with light.

Book Report: Stars Go Blue

30. Laura Pritchett, Stars Go Blue (2014) (11/10/18)

This is a grace-filled story of a family in crisis—very quiet crisis, but crisis nonetheless. It is told, mostly, in alternating chapters that cover the point of view of, respectively, 70-something Ben Cross, a Colorado rancher recently diagnosed with dementia, possibly Alzheimer's, and his wife, Renny. We are made privy to the way Ben's mind is ceasing to function, to make sense of the world, and to Renny's weary fury—not at Ben (though maybe a little at Ben, or at the lack of control that is tearing them down and apart), but more at the death of their daughter Rachel at her husband's hands some years earlier, a death that led to Ben and Renny's semi-estrangement at opposite ends of their ranch. Or maybe her fury is just at life, writ large. Though recently, Renny has moved Ben back to the main house, where she can keep an eye on him. There is another daughter, Carolyn, and several grandchildren, especially quiet Jess, so much like Ben. There is a sheriff's deputy, a large-animal veterinarian. Eventually, there is a pregnant waitress, and a meth head. And Rachel's killer, newly released from prison. And there is a blizzard.

Courage and water are two strong themes of the book. "Courage is fear that has said its prayers," Ben muses, as he summons up his own prayers, his own courage, to do the unthinkable. As for water, it appears in all sorts of guises: as "fields [of] poured ice, rippled and waved," at the very start of the book; as watersheds; as irrigation and rainfall; as rivers of electricity in the brain; as snow; even as necessary absence, since dry days are crucial to getting the hay baled and stored.

In one Renny passage, she

wants to say something about a new important thought she has had. How spirits go up, toward the sky, but souls go down, toward the earth and toward water. Water runs down because the earth pulls it that way. The soul wants to go down, too, and grow roots, run like a river. And that maybe death is like water running backward. Could that be?

There are many lovely, lyric paragraphs with water circling as a metaphor—for hope, for reality, for necessity.

The title of the book is explained in a couple of passages, such as this:

Tell you what I'm gonna do, see.
 I often hear myself saying it, even now.
 I say it to the river, I say it to the water that designs its own path as it spreads across the fields. I say it to water snaking down the irrigation ditch for the first time, and spreading across the field right as the sun is setting and hitting it just right, making it look like a sparkling sea. I say it to the beautiful earth, to the beautiful moon. I say it because to me, he was like a blue star, the kind that dies in the most spectacular of ways. Not, like the others, by shrinking up. But by exploding.

But overall, it's a book about real people with complicated feelings and attachments. Ultimately, it's a novel of hope and love.

Geocaching: Toro Hall of Fame

The Shire - Rangitikei ( GC4B4AR)

I have written about my favorite hobby, geocaching, before. Many times!* Most of those simply described fun outings when we had fun finding fun caches and going on fun hikes. The pleasure of the hunt. Enjoyment of clever containers. Discovering people's favorite spots in their local area that an outsider would likely never stumble upon otherwise. For me, geocaching is the best guidebook, by far. A few years ago we explored much of New Zealand by geocache, finding some awesomely memorable spots in the process.

But this weekend was different, as we—finally!—completed a challenge that we began (unknowingly) in 2008, when we first went out seeking caches in a local regional park, Toro. It's a big park: 4,756 acres (7.4 sq. mi.), with over 20 miles of hiking trails. Of which we have now, I believe, traversed every blessed inch. And then some. The highest peak is Simas at 2,139 feet, but what with all the ups and downs of the rugged backcountry, you end up climbing 3,500 feet or more on a normal long outing.

On the geocaching map, near the park's entrance, is a bold blue question mark that kept nagging at me, whenever I'd go to plan a day's excursion: a challenge cache called Toro Hall of Fame. It involves finding all of the hundred caches that were extant when the challenge was posted, on August 25, 2008. Here's the map:

It doesn't really look like all that much, but . . . believe me, it is. Especially when you consider how many of them aren't really on any kind of trail at all—the "byway" and "layover" and "bushwhacking" caches. Not to mention the ones that, okay, are on a trail, but are a bazillion miles from any kind of trailhead.

One day a couple of years ago, when I was planning another day's outing, it occurred to me that much of my Toro Park map was already filled with yellow smiley faces, indicating finds. Perhaps it was time to give the Hall of Fame page a serious look at last, and see just what was involved. After a bit of study, I realized that we only had to find about 35 more caches for the "final" to be ours. No problem!

It quickly became a quest. Or, better: obsession.

Most of our trips were pretty civilized: walking on pleasant dirt ranch roads, occasionally veering up a hillside to locate a hide. But this last year has been a minor version of hell, as we went after the gnarliest of gnarlies. One day in particular (which turned into two): looking for the Airplane to Simas Layover cache. Here are my and David (aka FifiBonacci)'s logs for that one, starting with 2/24/18:

[Me] Hotshoe, thegirlsfromPA, and I were within .2 mile from this one today, crashing unhappily through the brush, while FifiBonacci—who'd gotten separated from us—was happily signing the log. The gentleman he is, he says he'll come back with me, since I still need it for the Toro Hall of Fame (dammit). We might come at it from above next time. Then again, I was so close... maybe from below. I don't know. This is the most out-in-the-middle-of-rotten-nowhere cache I've ever run across.

[David] Whew! I found this one, on a caching adventure with annevoi (& geodog Milo), thegirlsfromPA, and hotshoe. However, after we found Simas to Airplane trail, we took what seemed like a good trail back, but it took us down and sideways, not where we wanted to be. Milo & I chose to go straight up the hillside, then the others informed me they would follow a cow trail instead. Well, I couldn't get through the thick undergrowth to the ridge, so I went sideways, and basically got completely lost, with brave Milo tagging along. Eventually annevoi called me (thank goodness for cell reception!), and we agreed to just meet up at the next (this) cache. As it happened, I was only 270' away from it, and it was downhill from the impenetrable brush! So M & I quickly got there and, after a little searching, I found the cache! It is in fine shape! (And thanks for the pencil, since I somehow lost my pen on the way.) [The others were coming to join me, but turned back after the bushwhacking got too unpleasant.] The trail out was rather sketchy, and once up on the ridge we could not find any trail at all. But finally we all reunited and headed back down to Harper Canyon. TFT out-in-the-middle-of-nowhere C!

And yes, since David is such a gentleman, we returned, on 3/11/18. Here are our logs for that day:

[Me] Woot! Did things more sensibly this time, including bringing the Garmin with the downloaded track. The trail is replete with PO. But... find it I had to. I will never come back here again, that I am sure of. The things we do for geocaching (and I include you wacky COs when I say that)........ TFTH.

[David] I accompanied annevoi on this return trip. Boy, following the trail (following the GPS track), even overgrown with PO everywhere, was so much easier than the ridiculous way I went the first time! Bonus: I found the pen I lost there last time!

In May, we set out to find the last four that we needed, though it involved a long trip—and the temperatures were climbing into the eighties. As it turned out, we found two, but the heat, and all the climbing, slayed me: I barely made it back to the car, never mind an additional mile, up hill and down dale, to the remaining caches. My physical malaise actually kind of scared me. I've always been so strong. But I guess age, and perhaps a lack of nourishing snacks, got the better of me.

Since May, we've been waiting for a more moderate day. And yesterday was it. I was a little nervous as we set out, since it would be a long hike, fairly rigorous, and we were often on exposed trails. We decided on the lower approach, though, which meant some good shade. And we had a .gpx track that would take us up the ridge to the first cache along a discernible "trail." And we had plenty of water, and snacks. And our goofy boy Milo for amusement. (Though we worried a bit about him too, since he's recently been diagnosed with arthritis. But he was a total trouper.)

The main concern about the first cache was whether, since it hadn't been logged in almost five years, it would be fully buried under oak duff. It took us a few minutes, but soon I noticed a careful "laying of sticks," and sure enough: it was in hand! The second find was quick, once we figured out how to access it. And then it was just the three-mile slog back to the blue question mark. Which cache we found, signed, and declared this wretched challenge OVER WITH.

In the end, we found 81 of the 100 caches originally posted (some were retired before we really got going, and some that we found have since been retired), but we found a few more that were placed since 2008. Our total count: 91, 92, somewhere around there. A good haul. And a good great adventure. We never need to go to Toro Park again! But we probably will...

Here are some photos I took yesterday. Including a screen shot of beautifully yellow Toro Park, all smileys!

The verdict: only 2.5 miles back to the "final"
—as the crow flies, anyway

The first cache is on the lefthand ridge—a good couple
of miles behind us by now

Happy dog!

Peace out—and now the first cache is even
farther behind us

The view out over Salinas Valley and Monterey Bay as
we climbed up toward the first cache

All smileys!

* Some of my previous geocaching posts can be seen here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here.

Book Report: On Tyranny

29. Timothy Snyder, On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century (2017) (10/19/18)

This little book—or more accurately, manifesto, opinionated and passionate—written by an expert in mid-twentieth-century totalitarianism, whether on the right (fascism) or the left (communism), provides twenty pithy lessons for Ameri-cans and others who find themselves teetering on the edge of an authoritarian precipice. They provide instruction, and perhaps hope—but only if we take the lessons to heart and mobilize, get informed, get active. And in this, Snyder suggests, history is an excellent teacher.

The twenty lessons are as follows:

1. Do not obey in advance. Most of the power of authoritarianism is freely given, which in turn teaches power what it can do. Snyder's example: anticipatory obedience in 1938 Vienna that decided the fate of Austrian Jews.
2. Defend institutions. Institutions do not protect themselves. Choose an institution you care about—a court, a newspaper, a law, a labor union—and take its side. Snyder's example: a 1933 editorial from a German Jewish newspaper expressing (as it turned out) naive skepticism that Hitler would deprive people of their constitutional rights.
3. Beware the one-party state. Support the multi-party system and defend the rules of democratic elections. Vote, and consider running for office. Snyder: "We [Americans] believe that we have checks and balances, but have rarely faced a situation like the present: when the less popular of the two parties controls every lever of power at the federal level, as well as the majority of statehouses. The party that exercises such control proposes few policies that are popular with society at large, and several that are generally unpopular—and thus must either fear democracy or weaken it."
4. Take responsibility for the face of the world. Notice the swastikas and other signs of hate. Do no look away, and do not get used to them. Remove them yourself. Snyder's examples: early 1930s Soviet Union under Stalin, portraying prosperous farmers as pigs, turning poorer peasants against the producers, inducing famine; 1933 Germany, marking shops as "Jewish" and watching silently as Jewish neighbors disappear; 1940s Czechoslovakia, greengrocers adopting the slogan "Workers of the world, unite!" simply to be able to do their business.
5. Remember professional ethics. It is hard to subvert a rule-of-law state without lawyers, or to hold show trials without judges. Authoritarians need obedient civil servants. Snyder: "Professional ethics must guide us precisely when we are told that the situation is exceptional."
6. Be wary of paramilitaries. Snyder's example: the SS, which ran the concentration camps, "began as an organization outside the law, became an organization that transcended the law, and ended up as an organization that undid the law."
7. Be ready if you must be armed. Evils of the past involved policemen and soldiers finding themselves, one day, doing irregular things. Be ready to say no. Snyder's examples: the Great Terror in the Soviet Union (1937–38) and, of course, the Holocaust (1941–45), both of which were carried out to a significant degree by regular police. "Without the conformists, the great atrocities would have been impossible."
8. Stand out. It is easy to follow along. It can feel strange to do or say something different. But without that unease, there is no freedom. The moment you set an example, the spell of the status quo is broken, and others will follow. Snyder's examples: Winston Churchill standing up to the Germans and against his own government; a young Polish woman who saved a Jewish family from certain death in the ghetto.
9. Be kind to our language. Think up your own way of speaking. Make an effort to separate yourself from the internet. Read books. Snyder discusses philologist Victor Klemperer's analysis of Hitlerian speech; classic novels of totalitarianism; and suggests a few illuminating books to read to learn more.
10. Believe in truth. To abandon facts is to abandon freedom. If nothing is true, then all is spectacle. Snyder discusses Victor Klemperer's four modes of the death of truth: open hostility to verifiable reality—presenting inventions and lies as if they were facts; shamanistic incantation ("Build the wall"); magic thinking, or the open embrace of contradiction; misplaced faith (e.g., in a leader). Also, Ionesco's Rhinoceros.
11. Investigate. Figure things out for yourself. Take responsibility for what you share with others. Snyder focuses here on the importance of solid, ethical print journalism.
12. Make eye contact and small talk. This is not just polite. It is part of being a citizen and a responsible member of society. Snyder: "In the most dangerous of times, those who escape and survive generally know people whom they can trust. Having old friends is the politics of last resort. And making new ones is the first step toward change."
13. Practice corporeal politics. Get outside. Put your body in unfamiliar places with unfamiliar people. Snyder's example: Poland's Solidarity movement.
14. Establish a private life. Try not to have hooks on which the tyrants can hang you. Snyder: this includes securing our computers.
15. Contribute to good causes. Be active in organizations, political or not, that express your own view of life. Pick a charity or two and set up autopay. Snyder: "Insofar as we take pride in these activities, and come to know others who do so as well, we are creating civil society."
16. Learn from peers in other countries. The present difficulties in the United States are an element of a larger trend. And no country is going to find a solution by itself. Snyder's example: Ukraine and those who study eastern Europe could see what was going on in the U.S. before many of us did.
17. Listen for dangerous words. Be angry about the treacherous use of patriotic vocabulary. Snyder's examples: exception, terrorism, extremism, emergency. 
18. Be calm when the unthinkable arrives. Modern tyranny is terror management. Snyder's examples: the 1933 Reichstag fire (whose cause remains unknown); the rise of Putin.
19. Be a patriot. Set a good example of what America means for the generations to come.  Snyder on the difference between nationalism and patriotism. "A patriot wants the nation to live up to its ideals, which means asking us to be our best selves. A patriot must be concerned with the real world, which is the only place where his country can be loved and sustained. A patriot has universal values, standards by which he judges his nation, always wishing it well—and wishing that it would do better."
20. Be as courageous as you can. If none of us is prepared to die for freedom, then all of us will die under tyranny.
Epilogue: the politics of inevitability (the sense that history could move in only one direction) vs. the politics of eternity (self-absorbed concern with a false past: MAGA)

There. I guess you don't need to read the book now. But . . . do. It's only 126 small-format pages. And you might learn something.

Isle of Dogs

Last night we watched Wes Anderson's animated feature Isle of Dogs, about a dog-hating overlord in the Japanese city of Megasaki who banishes all dogs to a vast garbage island—after (we eventually learn) infecting them with disease . . . which the politician's political opponent, a scientist, has in fact devised a cure for, but villains being villains, that breakthrough of course is suppressed.

The central characters are a group of a few scrappy dogs—Chief, Rex, Duke, Boss, King, and elegant (but still very scrappy) Nutmeg (voiced by Bryan Cranston, Edward Norton, Jeff Goldblum, Bill Murray, Bob Balaban, and Scarlet Johansson)—and a boy, the evil overlord's orphaned nephew Atari (voiced only in Japanese by Koyu Rankin), who flies to the island to rescue his beloved guardian dog, Spots (Liev Schreiber). There's an activist group of high school students back on the mainland, with an American exchange student, Tracy Walker (Greta Gerwig), as ringleader. (My conclusion is that she had to be American so the issue of translation didn't become onerous—see below.)

The bad guys are really, really bad. The good guys have adventures and setbacks but ultimately emerge victorious. I guess that's a bit of a spoiler, but you know they do win in the end, right? The Japanese characters all speak Japanese, and there are various clever modes of interpreting into English (some of the time, not all of the time). Yoko Ono and Frances McDormand appear. Kurosawa and Miyaziki were inspirations. It's wacky Wes Anderson all round.

We thoroughly enjoyed the movie, partly for the story, which works fine, but mainly for the production: the stop-action animation of literally hundreds of puppets is simply astonishing, and the art is exquisite—all of it, exquisitely obsessive to boot. Anderson made a few "featurettes" on the creation of the movie. (Though if you'd like to start with the trailer, go here.)

First up, the animators:

Then, the puppets:

Weather and set elements:

Here are a few of the cast describing their roles in the movie:

 And finally, here's an "Ode to Dogs on Set":

Book Report: Transcription

28. Kate Atkinson, Transcription (2018) (10/9/18)

I have never read Kate Atkinson before, but I've heard great things about her, so I was eager to dive into her newest release. Set in 1940 and 1950 (and very briefly in 1981), the story concerns Juliet Armstrong, who transcribes conversations between an MI5 operative, Godfrey Toby, and "Fifth Columnists," or Fascist sympathizers, during WWII—and by 1950 has moved on to produce children's radio shows for the BBC. Juliet gets called on to do a bit of spy work herself—in more ways than one.

I very much enjoyed Atkinson's writing, which is witty and sardonic (if overly given to parenthetical asides), and overall literary. The story is replete with characters, which occasionally confused me (wait, just who was Hartley again?). There's a juicy murder and circumspect burial. Secrets are traded. At one point Juliet feels like she's being followed, with elaborate ruses put in place to make her believe a certain version of reality. There are, of course, transcriptions. And Juliet, it turns out, is a highly accomplished liar—not in a malicious way; more in a smoothing-over way. But deceit comes in handy in the spycraft line of work. It all amounts to a pretty good espionage thriller, though I have to say that in the end the final twists came too fast and furious and the whole thing seemed to unravel. I couldn't help but wonder if Atkinson was trying to be a tad too clever, and what could have been solid, historically based storytelling began to veer into farce.

In one very funny episode early on—to give you a sample of Atkinson's style—Juliet accompanies her boss, Peregrine Gibbons (on whom she has wistful designs), out of London for a miserable stroll through the countryside.

He had binoculars with him and she wondered if he was looking for anything in particular.
 "Kites," he said. "They're long gone from this part of the world and I don't suppose we'll see them again, but you can live in hope." Kites? Did he mean birds? First [otter] kits, now kites. Her mind ran on to Kit Kats, a thought that made her immeasurably sad, as she knew there were going to be none.
 He cupped his ear and said, "Can you hear that woodpecker?"
 "That" (annoying) "knocking sound?"
 Juliet knew nothing about birds. She could manage the common ones—pigeons, sparrows, and so on—but her ornithology didn't extend beyond the streets of London. She was a complete philistine where wildlife was concerned. Perry, on the other hand, was a nature enthusiast. He didn't find kites, but he spotted and named an awful lot of other birds. An awful lot.
 "You need a good memory in our line of work," he said. But she wasn't going to be identifying birds, was she? (Was she?) "Look," he whispered, crouching and pulling her down with him. "Hares—boxing. It's the female who throws the punches. Wonderful!"
 Any romantic notions she may have been fostering had been entirely numbed by cold and hunger. He was currently expounding on the regurgitating habits of owls. "Fur and bone of voles and mice," he said, and she thought of the witches in Macbeth and she laughed and responded with " 'Eye of newt and toe of frog.' "
 "Well, yes," he said, perplexed by the allusion. "Frogs—and rats—are occasionally found in their pellets. Shrews are common. You can identify the different species by their jawbones." He had no Shakespeare, she realized.
 He strode ahead of her and she had to go almost at a trot to keep up with him, trailing on his heels like a dutiful retriever. A nippy breeze had got up now and started to carry away his words and she missed a lot of information about the breeding habits of roe deer and the architecture of rabbit warrens. She thought longingly of the driver's neat white sandwich triangles. 

Indeed, I found the conversations especially delightful, with the characters so often at cross-purposes, or with decidedly different grasps of reality. Apparently Atkinson is also keen on structure (as discussed in this New York Times podcast, which I have yet to listen to), as the hopping around in time—not just between 1940 and 1950, but back and forth within a particular year, or even week—suggests. And she freely admits that truth is greatly amended by invention. As she states in an "Author's Note," "Roughly speaking, for everything that could be considered a historical fact in this book, I made something up—and I'd like to think that a lot of the time readers won't be able to tell the difference. I'm only stating this to prevent people claiming that I got something wrong. I got a lot of it wrong, on purpose."

Now I'm interested to read some of Atkinson's other books. Starting, I believe, with her Whitbread Prize winner, Behind the Scenes at the Museum. Might as well begin at the beginning.

P.S. When I did listen to the podcast mentioned above, Atkinson chose to read aloud the section immediately before the sample I offer, which launches their little countryside jaunt. I love it that she considers that passage as representative or telling as I did. She said she chose to read it because it introduces Juliet well, and it epitomizes the lack of communication that, in a way, characterizes so much of the book.