Isobel Fairfax, the heroine of ''Human Croquet,'' is an omniscient narrator who, paradoxically, often hasn't a clue about what has really happened. Like Ruby Lennox, the droll narrator of ''Behind the Scenes at the Museum,'' Isobel is a child with knowledge of family history and world events beyond and outside herself -- but somehow her possession of such wisdom is nevertheless plausible. She knows the past, she knows the future, but comprehending the present is an elusive task. Atkinson has a deft ability to convey that quality of simultaneous knowing and not knowing that is fundamental to human thought. In this way, both her novels feature a Muriel Sparkish motif of the narrative voice alternately running ahead and lagging behind the steadily advancing sequence of events.

The quirky imagination, subversive humor and instinct for domestic chaos that Atkinson displayed in her first novel, Whitbread winner Behind the Scenes at the Museum, are rampantly evident again here, as the British author audaciously fuses several genres in a story that does not quite live up to expectations.