When Will There Be Good News?: A Novel
by Kate Atkinson
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Book Reviews of When Will There Be Good News?: A Novel
Book Review: A mystery that stretches the boundaries of the genre
Summary: 5 Stars
Kate Atkinson's most recent novels have seemed, on the surface of things, like a radical departure for a Whitbread Award-winning novelist whose previous works were noted for their use of magical realism and their unusual family dynamics. With CASE HISTORIES, however, the first book featuring detective Jackson Brodie, Atkinson took her well-established skill at exploring characters and relationships, and applied it to an entirely new genre --- the mystery. Since then, with ONE GOOD TURN and now with WHEN WILL THERE BE GOOD NEWS?, Atkinson continues to push the boundaries of the mystery genre, writing intricate, suspenseful character studies that are bound to appeal even to literary purists who would swear they had never read a mystery novel in their lives.
These three books are loosely interconnected, focusing at least in part on Brodie and Edinburgh police inspector Louise Monroe. In ONE GOOD TURN, the sexual tension that defined Jackson and Louise's interactions never came to fruition; in WHEN WILL THERE BE GOOD NEWS?, readers will be intrigued to discover that both main characters, in the intervening months, have made very similar choices in their personal lives, choices that will continue to complicate their personal and professional relationships.
But, as with the previous titles in this series, the private detective and the police inspector are, unusually, hardly the most important characters in the novel. Instead, Atkinson introduces a good dozen characters, each of whom carries his or her own tale of love, loss and betrayal, and whose stories come together in remarkable and, at times, surprising ways.
Central to the story is Joanna Hunter, now a successful physician and new mother living in Edinburgh. As a child, however, Joanna gained notoriety for being the only survivor of a brutal triple murder that left her mother, older sister and baby brother dead. The killer was sentenced to life in prison, but after 30 years he's now out on parole, and Joanna is haunted by fears that the media --- and the assailant himself --- might find her and destroy the new life she's built for herself.
Part of that new life includes Joanna's husband Neil, a somewhat shady businessman with secrets of his own, and mother's helper Reggie (short for Regina), a teenager studying for her A-levels and adopting Joanna as a surrogate mother, since few people know that Reggie's own mother died more than a year ago. Her older brother Billy is up to no good, so when Joanna disappears, Reggie doesn't know where to turn.
That is, until she encounters Louise Monroe, who is investigating a suspicious fire at one of Neil's business establishments, and Jackson Brodie, whom Reggie meets by chance after he's been seriously injured in a brutal and bloody train derailment. Each of these three have their own reasons for delving into the mysteries that surround them.
Besides being passably engaging mysteries, Atkinson's latest novels are utterly engrossing joint character studies. As she develops each character independently, she also, increasingly, shows them in relation to one another, developing layers of interconnection that go beyond coincidence. Language also connects the subplots in playful ways. The themes of the book, however, are a good deal darker --- focusing on young women alone in the world, on the loneliness of those who find themselves still alive when everyone they love has died, on the difficulty of forming and maintaining relationships in a fundamentally flawed world.
WHEN WILL THERE BE GOOD NEWS? offers sophisticated readers a mystery that stretches the boundaries of the genre, opening up the story to provide portraits of a community of sorts, united by proximity and by loss.
--- Reviewed by Norah Piehl
Book Review: A Delicious Book
Summary: 5 Stars
It's been a long time since I've savored a book. Lately, I've slogged through books, skimmed my way through books and inhaled books. (It's been a hit and miss winter of reading, if you can't tell.)
But "When Will There Be Good News?" is the perfect mix of gripping mystery, tongue in cheek societal commentary and careful character study. And? Even though it was more than difficult at times...I managed to savor it for a whole WEEK. (OK, there was one late night where I lost track of time, but still.)
Based on Atkinson's previous Jackson Brodie novels, I was accustomed to her style and the pace of action, but I didn't remember the wonderful snarkiness of some of her, I mean, the characters' observations.
"In Jackson's long experience, security covered a multitude of sins, but actually it was pretty straightforward - he had a card in his wallet that said "Jackson Brodie - Security Consultant" (consultant, now there was a word that covered an even greater multitude of sins)."
And when Atkinson read my thoughts, "...he believed that no woman should wear a pair of shoes that she couldn't, if necessary, run away in." "....None of the women at Bernie's soiree looked as if they would be prepared to toss away their Manolos and Jimmy Choos to make a quick getaway. Yes, he knew the names of designer shoemakers, and no, that wasn't the kind of stuff real men from the north should know..."
And one of my favorites: "...the walls had been spray-painted rather ineptly with the words, "Your dead." Reggie felt bile rising up, making her nauseous. You cant hide from us. Who was us? Who were these people who didn't know how to use an apostrophe? They must be looking for Billy. Billy knew a lot of ungrammatical people."
Kate Atkinson has a sneaky way of easing into dramatic and usually violent scenes that catches me off guard, has me jumping back a few paragraphs in a startled, "Did I really just read that?" kind of way. Early in the book, she had me right smack in the middle of a sunny, humid summer day, feeling the sun, smelling dried grass...and then literally (hee) smacked me upside the head with a random act of violence that I did NOT see coming.
And the mystery and action build in such a character focused way that while I may not be able to predict what the characters will do, she's laid enough groundwork that their actions never take a sideways turn that seem out of place.
In that character focused way, the book is filled with wonderful bits - simply said, but exactly right.
"Yes," Reggie said. "My mother's not here at the moment." One lie, one truth. They canceled each other out and left the world unchanged."
Or "It went without saying that Jackson didn't believe in angels, but in extremis he was always willing to give credence to anything."
And "He had drawn those terrible feelings inside himself, nourishing them in solitary confinement until they formed the hard, black nugget of coal at the heart of his soul, but now the disaster was external, the wreckage was tangible, it was outside the room he was sleeping in."
Because this book involves a mystery...several mysteries, really, I've been trying to carefully pick quotes that are not spoilers. And - I just realized that in my review - I never really even touched on the plot.
I suppose it's because this book was about the characters and the writing...and the feeling of the book for me. Which for me was enough - more than enough. To enjoy, to re-read, to savor.
Book Review: Atkinson Does It Again
Summary: 4 Stars
"When Will There Be Good News?" is Kate Atkinson's third Jackson Brodie novel and in it, as she did in the first two Brodie novels, Atkinson successfully keeps several seemingly unrelated plot lines in the air long enough to bring them all together at the end for another of her rousing climaxes. Kate Atkinson is one hell of a juggler - she never drops anything.
The book begins on a rather normal day for a small town mother and her three young children, a day during which something will go terribly wrong, so wrong that only one of the four will survive it. Flash forward some thirty years and sixteen-year-old Reggie Chase, who looks more like twelve and has no one to look after her, is happily taking care of Dr. Joanna Hunter's toddler son every day while the doctor works at the local clinic. Reggie gets along so well with Dr. Hunter and her baby that she feels the Hunter family to be a replacement for the one she no longer has.
Joanna Hunter, although she does not know the truth about Reggie's personal life, thinks of Reggie more as a friend and younger sister than as an employee. The same, however, cannot be said for Joanna's husband, Neil, a man so concerned with his business affairs that he barely acknowledges Reggie's existence unless he needs her to cover his absence by staying longer into the evening with the baby.
Retired detective Jackson Brodie, in the meantime, is unwittingly hurtling toward his own personal chaos in Edinburgh, an accident that will put him out of commission and wondering who he is for a goodly portion of "When Will There Be Good News?" In Edinburgh, Brodie's former love interest, DCI Louise Monroe, recently promoted and recently married, is beginning an investigation into the business affairs of Dr. Hunter's husband while trying to locate the recently released prisoner responsible for destroying the young Mason family thirty years earlier.
So there you have it: one family already destroyed, a self-sufficient teen looking to replace the family she herself recently lost, a conscientious doctor married to an unscrupulous businessman, an Edinburg DCI charged with investigating that businessman, and Jackson Brodie headed their way in a rush. Jackson Brodie plays a smaller role in "When Will There Be Good News?" then his fans will expect in a "Jackson Brodie novel," but what happens when he does finally come front and center will not disappoint readers of the two previous Brodie books.
Kate Atkinson has a way of creating characters, no matter how eccentric they may be, that take on lives of their own. Her characters, even the minor ones, are so finely developed that they become real and memorable. However, the real fun of one of Atkinson's Brodie novels comes from watching her pull so many loose threads together in a way that makes perfect sense by the end of her story. She manages a complex plot as well as anyone, and I am looking forward to "Brodie 4" and her next juggling act.
Book Review: (4.5) "Love was ferocious, love knew how to play dirty."
Summary: 5 Stars
"Run, Joanna. Run." So begins this riveting novel, a small girl witness to a harrowing crime that, thirty years later, once more intrudes upon the security of an innocent victim who has remade the past into a sustainable present. On a jagged trajectory, a convicted criminal is released, a former cop accidentally detours into Edinburgh, a train crash and a rendezvous with fate and a sixteen-year-old mother's helper clings desperately to the only "family" she has left. Atkinson threads lives together in a complicated pattern, a multi-colored skein that winds through connecting stories, each critical to the whole. Seemingly compartmentalized, in time the random associations prove cleverly orchestrated, one with another, from Dr. Jo Hunter and her helper, Reggie, to Detective Chief Inspector Louise Monroe and Jackson Brodie (from a previous novel, One Good Turn), even the incarcerated Andrew Decker, released after thirty years, his intentions for the future a cipher.
The author's unusual talent perfectly lends itself to a style of assembled perspectives, each protagonist caught up in personal circumstances, yet all routed to a final denouement. Atkinson is a facile puppet master, moving her pawns purposefully toward the final confrontation, as devastating as the opening chapter of the novel. The characters are wonderfully human, plagued with self-doubts and festering fears, most touched by the untimely, sometimes violent death of loved ones. For all the brisk application to the business of living, the shadowed ghosts of lost loved ones hover significantly, reminding us of the precious moments too often forgotten or left unsavored. This juxtaposition of life and death creates the exquisite tension that drives the story, the threat waiting in the wings for a random cue. A technique that sometimes irritated me in One Good Turn lends this tale a fragmented urgency.
There is class-consciousness coexisting with professionalism, the security of material goods and the paucity of poverty, all of it irrelevant in the face of death, the great leveler.
Still Reggie and Dr. Hunter are at the heart of all, the girl clinging to her employer and chubby baby as family in a hard world, Jo Hunter creating a safe place far from her traumatic childhood but is delivered into danger by the actions of a foolish man. That violence should interfere with best laid plans is the nature of Atkinson's novel: expect the unexpected, a litany of "the wrong person at the wrong place at the wrong time". DCI Monroe is another study in character, a bundle of contradictions between her obsession with "my ladies" (her crime case victims) and the certainly that she is a Bad Wife. Sampling bits of these odd pairings throughout the novel, the author blends them into seamless whole; even when the plot stretches unbelievably, it is engaging and compelling. Luan Gaines/ 2008.
Book Review: One Common Thread...
Summary: 5 Stars
A woman and three children are living in the country; a husband is off writing his novels and having affairs - in the city - and against this backdrop, the unexpected happens. On an otherwise blissful day, an intruder stalks into all of their lives, murdering the woman and two of her children, while another child cowers in the field nearby, unharmed.
Except, of course, for that nasty post-traumatic stress disorder that clings to her - forever.
This is the past, to which the reader is introduced in When Will There Be Good News?: A Novel, followed by an influx of seemingly unrelated characters - Reggie, who is Dr. Hunter's nanny; Louise, an unhappily-married police officer, fondly recalling a love she almost had, a long time ago; Jackson, married twice and cuckolded by a lover, whose infant child may inadvertently belong to him; and Ms. MacDonald, a former teacher, now retired. Somehow, all of these disparate individuals are connected by at least one common thread.
A train wreck...Indeed, as one character hurtles along on a train headed toward London, or so Jackson believes, it is actually headed toward Edinburgh. When it lurches and turns on its side, its passengers tossed about, everything becomes tangled - literally. When Jackson ends up in hospital, miraculously kept alive by CPR administered by one Reggie Chase, he has the wrong ID on him. This fact sets the tale in a completely different direction.
Unbeknownst to these two characters - Reggie, the nanny, and Jackson, a former police detective - Dr. Hunter and her baby have gone missing. Ah, yes - Dr. Hunter is the former Joanna Mason, the child accidentally left alive by the murderer all those years ago - and to compound the case even further, the murderer, one Andrew Decker, has just been released from prison.
With the alternating storylines and characters, careening toward the answers to so many questions, I kept turning these pages, almost breathless, anticipating the conclusions. And, of course, there are many surprises at the end, which makes this more than an ordinary mystery, or a simple love story, and certainly not a predictable drama.
This writer skillfully teases the reader, pushing and pulling the facts around, until they arrange themselves in such a clever way. I found myself going back to the beginning again, wondering what I might have missed - what clue I had overlooked - in order to have been so stunned by the ending.
I have another of Ms. Atkinson's books on my stack - One Good Turn: A Jolly Murder Mystery - which will receive my attention very soon.
Laurel-Rain Snow