Kate Atkinson

I'm a fan.
As you can see from my EARLIER POSTS HERE and HERE.

But I didn't love the recent Life After Life.

A friend who reads a lot described it as an Adult Choose-Your-Own-Adventure tale. 
Remember those? Read to a certain page, answer a question, choose to go to one page or another.

That was kind of how we both felt about LIFE AFTER LIFE.

Now guess what. Her next book is to be a "companion" to that one.

"In A God in Ruins, Kate will focus on Teddy, would-be poet, RAF bomber pilot, husband and father, as he navigates the perils and progress of the 20th century. For all Teddy endures in battle, his greatest challenge will be to face living in a future he never expected to have.

Kate's publisher said, 'A God in Ruins is a masterful companion to Life After Life, and will prove once again that Kate Atkinson is one of the finest novelists of our age.'" 

The image on the right is the U.S. cover.

Read all about it HERE,  pre-order, tell your bookstores it's coming.

I will read it and hope it's more <Brodie> than Choosing and Jumping Around. 
Or maybe I'll wait till she returns to the mysteries I loved.

Even loved the Masterpiece Mystery adaptation of her Jackson Brodie series.
(Though not as much as the books. Naturally.)

If you've missed this author, how about this for a strong recommendation?

Here's what another favorite crime writer, Harlan Coban, has to say:
Kate Atkinson is an absolute must-read. I love everything she writes.

Masterpiece Mystery

Check it out!
According to the Sunday New York Times, my favorite new mystery series is coming to Masterpiece Mystery on PBS next fall.

 I love the books, but I'll definitely be tuning in my TV come October.

 Related post: Kate Atkinson

Started Early Took My Dog

  If you want a really terrific, complete review of Scottish writer Kate Atkinson's latest Jackson Brodie mystery, check out this review from last week's New York Times Book Review.

I couldn't say it any better myself so I won't even try.

Besides, the book is overdue at my library and has a zillion others waiting, so I'll make this brief. Check out one of my prior posts here if you don't know these books. Gentle reminder: Read the books in order for maximum enjoyment.



Book 1- Case Histories
Book 2- One Good Turn
Book 3- When Will There Be Good News?





Here are a few places I stickie-noted because they made me laugh and made me sigh. She's such a terrific writer.

(Jackson's observation)

In the half century of his life, a tick on the Doomsday Clock, he had borne witness to the most unbelievable technological advances. He had started off listening to an old Bush valve radio in the corner of the living room and now he had a phone in his hand on which he could pretend to throw a scrunched-up piece of paer into a waste bin. The world had waited a long time for that.

(Tracy describing a scene.)

It took Tracy a second or two to realize that she was trying to flirt with Arkwright. She was deluded. It was like trying to flirt with a wardrobe.

(Jackson and his dog on the run.)
He didn't want to incur the wrath of his hostess for the night by waking her from her beauty sleep. She needed all she could get.

And if you're curious, like I was, the title comes from an Emily Dickinson poem, which you can read in its entirety by clicking here.

Started Early Took My Dog

Yay! Today's the release day for the latest in this series of mysteries featuring detective Jackson Brodie and very fine writing by Kate Atkinson.
 Janet Maslin reviewed the book last week, but I avoided reading the New York Times review. I prefer to form my own opinions on this one!

As I said in an earlier post here, be sure to start with Book #1.

I've been anticipating this book for over a year. It's been out in England for that long. Can't wait.

FYI: Book 1- Case Histories
        Book 2- One Good Turn
        Book 3- When Will There Be Good News?

The New York Times Book Review, again

Most of my library career was spent on the East Coast, usually surrounded by readers of the New York Times, in particular, its Book Review. I was frequently influenced to purchase a book for my school library (Pre-school through Grade 5) which ended up a shelf sitter (i.e. never loved by the kids as much as it was loved by the reviewer). This was more often the case with picture books than with books for older kids.

But as a grown-up reader, I read their reviews just for sheer pleasure of the prose. Yes, I frequently find a book there I've never heard of and do read and adore (Case in point, Kate Atkinson's mysteries).

But what better description of Ian McEwan's new book SOLAR than today's review by Walter Kirn who calls it "a book so good-- so ingeniously designed, irreproachably high-minded and skillfully brought off-- that it's actually quite bad... It's impressive to behold but something of a virtuous pain to read." Later in the review he calls the book "a buttery, rich sauce ladled onto overcooked, dry meat."

Ouch.

But I do not need to read a virtuous pain of a book.

I've read another mediocre review of this book so even though I adored Ian McEwan's Atonement and kind of liked a couple of others, I'll wait for somebody to dispute Mr. Kirn's opinion before adding it to my To Read list. Because that review is just so dang fun to read, I have to trust it.


Related posts: The New York Times Book Review
Kate Atkinson, My New Favorite Series

When Will There Be Good News?

Finally finished the last of the Jackson Brodie trilogy and fearlessly hoping there's more in the works. (Aha! Amazon UK says there's a 4th, due there in August 2010!)

For now, perhaps I'll try some of Kate Atkinson's earlier books, though I've heard mixed results from friends who've tried and given up on them.

It's not only her writing style I loved in these three books, very literary mysteries with just the right amount of humor to offset the grisly bits. I love the stories and most of the characters.

Jackson, especially, a tired, jaded,former policeman who just can't seem to get his life together. Here's a comment of his as he thinks about Louise, a woman he hoped he might have connected with:
How ironic that both Julia and Louise, the two women he'd felt closest to in his recent past, had both unexpectedly got married, and neither of them to him.

And this from Reggie, another irresistable character, the young, persistent nanny:
She'd identified a dead body, had her flat vandalized, and been threatened by violent idiots, and it wasn't even lunchtime. Reggie hoped the rest of the day would be more uneventful.

You probably want to read these three books in order:
Case Histories
One Good Turn
and then
When Will There Be Good News?

Ah, well. Must return it to the library and cross my fingers it won't take too long for that new book to cross the ocean...




(Word I had to look up while reading and will never use in conversation?

Simulacrum:
1. image, representation
2. An insubstantial form or semblance of something; trace)

Escape from Snowmageddon

I took a blogging break this weekend to play with my friend Julie, a visitor from The North. We had great fun listening to The Help (terrific recording!) and talking about Olive Kitteridge (which we both adored). Although Julie's very good at prodding my writing along, this time we mostly focused on The Weather. When they cancelled her return flight to Baltimore, I got to keep her for an extra day or two. We shopped, walked in the sunshine, ate, and watched Emma on TV.

(Thanks, Kate and Carl, for the pictures!)



Here's what she escaped.
(Her street in Baltimore County.)












And this is my daughter's street in Bethesda... Had the plow arrived yet? She says not until Monday night. (Actually, this is a nearby street. Hers is still unplowed, deep, undrivable...)





Neither rain, nor sleet, nor... HA!

(No mail for a while, I guess.)At least the sun's shining?



Almost 30 inches? Maybe I'll get Julie until April! Lots of books yet to read and talk about.

(What she's recommending I read next: REMARKABLE CREATURES.
Here's what I'm recommending she read next: the Jackson Brodie trilogy by Kate Atkinson.)

New Favorite Series (I hope)

I discovered the books of Kate Atkinson through a review in the New York Times. And rushed right out to my local library to reserve When Will There Be Good News?


After about 10 pages, I realized that I was onto something. And I returned that book and checked out, Case Histories, the first of the series. I say series with hope. So far, there are three books in what Janet Maslin terms "books that would be chronologically linked if Ms. Atkinson had a simple sense of chronology." Which she doesn't.

Series or not, I wanted to start at the beginning.

Now I've finished book #2: ONE GOOD TURN. Next, I'm back to where I started, with Atkinson's newest. These books are hard to describe, other than saying they are fabulously written and fun to follow. Shifts in Point of View don't disrupt the action. Funny asides don't seem like author intrusions. I laughed at a lot of things in the first two books.

A favorite thought from One Good Turn: Martin, a writer/oddball of a character, imagines moving his fiction away from the linear narratives about his (boring) character and "writing a Borges-like construction where each story contained the kernel of the next and so on..something with intellectual cachet (something good)."

And this, as that same writer views the receptionist at the dump of a hotel he finds himself holed up in when a murder has kept him from his own house: "She had a smear of what looked like blood on her chin, but Martin thought it was more likely to be tomato ketchup."

That's about the way these first two mysteries progress. Weaving seamlessly from story to story, with kernels of characters, places, actions showing up from one to the next. Just great writing. And fun reading. In fact, reviewer Janet Maslin included When Will There Be Good News on her Top 10 list for 2008 (Along with Dennis Lehane's The Given Day, Edgar Sawtelle, and Ron Rash's Serena, among others).

I agree with Maslin who says she very much hopes Atkinson will continue the series. Here's what another favorite crime writer (if you can call them that), Harlan Coban, has to say:
Kate Atkinson is an absolute must-read. I love everything she writes.

Ditto that, Mr. Coban.


Related posts:
Writers in Paradise: Dennis Lehane