When Will There Be Good News? : Kate Atkinson
When Will There Be Good News opens with a shocking tragedy — the senseless murder of a young mother and her children. One child from the family — Joanna — survives by running away into a nearby wheat field.
As in her earlier novel Case Histories, the first in her series featuring ex-policeman Jackson Brodie, this tragedy occurs in the past and at first is seemingly completely disconnected from the contemporary narrative which follows. But, of course, eventually the connection will be revealed and have significant — in fact, shattering — consequences in the present day.
Atkinson has a wonderful way of entwining all the different threads of her characters’ lives and linking them in unexpected ways. Sometimes this means that her plots are too heavily reliant on co-incidence, but, hey, this is fiction, and she can get away with it.
Despite beginning with a terrible tragedy, and including at least one other catastrophe, together with quite a bit of random violence, this book has a surprising amount of humor which gives it great charm. Most of the humor comes out of her characters, and indeed the best things about her books are her great and memorable characters.
Jackson Brodie himself has a deeply mordant self-image, constantly questioning his past and sour about his future, and who seems to have a talent for getting himself into trouble. But we’re also introduced to Robbie Chase, a wonderfully bright and independent teenage girl intent on building a life for herself despite her mother’s death and being burdened by her drug-addicted, often violent, brother. She has a part-time job as a nanny for Dr Jo Hunter, and a close personal relationship with her.
Halfway into the book, though, Jo Hunter and her baby go missing without explanation. Robbie spends the rest of the book trying to figure out what has happened, and trying to track down the mother and child. This is complicated by her youth, and the fact that no one believes her story that the pair have been kidnapped. Along the way, almost — no, in fact — by accident she recruits the help of Jackson Brodie. As she discovers, this may or may not have been a good idea.
The conclusion is shattering, and leaves you thinking hard about just what has been going on.
There’s no doubt in my mind that this is the best of the Jackson Brodie series. I highly recommend Kate Atkinson’s books, both those featuring Brodie and her others, including her latest Life After Life, a review of which I’ll try to tackle shortly.
By the way, I love the cover designs of the Black Swan editions of Atkinson’s books. I wish now that I had collected all of the paperbacks with these designs (instead, I came to Atkinson rather too late, and via the ebook editions). The hardcovers, alas, have a variety of awful covers (except for Life After Life).
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Originally published at rightword.com.au on January 25, 2014.
