Case Histories: A Novel
by Kate Atkinson
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Book Summary Information
Author: Kate AtkinsonEdition: Mass Market Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2008-09-01
ISBN: 0316033480
Number of pages: 400
Publisher: Little, Brown and Company
Book Reviews of Case Histories: A Novel
Book Review: (3.5) "Time was a thief, he stole your life away."
Summary: 4 Stars
As her recent novel has shown (When Will There Be Good News?), Atkinson's talent has developed over the years, a unique style that is more an aggregation of circumstances than fluid narrative. As the title indicates, there are three mysteries that form the crux of this novel: a little girl disappears one summer night when sleeping outdoors with her sister (1970); a young woman is savagely killed her first day on a new job (1994); and a small family, mother, baby and husband are caught in an impetuous rage that ends in a bloodbath one Saturday afternoon (1979). Each of these scenarios is riveting, the image of a little girl clutching her "blue mouse" the night she disappears; Theo, a desperate, morbidly obese father who cannot escape that one day when his daughter died; and Michelle, whose life is irrevocably altered, her husband dead, an axe embedded in his head.
These characters experience their finest moments in tragedy, the events etched in their minds, scenes of loss and death. It is in the mundane details of the years that follow that the stories falter, the dramas overshadowed by the tedium of daily living, surviving by endurance of the ordinary. Jackson Brodie, a private investigator with a police background, is no exception, bored by his current surveillance of a wife suspected of infidelity. Brodie isn't much encouraged by his new cases either: two middle-aged women who have located a clue to their missing sister's fate all thirty years later; Theo's insistent need for closure, his unwavering desire to finally learn who killed Laura and truncated his life to a daily repetition of the crime scene; and an elderly woman who hires Brodie to locate missing cats, but mostly to fill the empty hours of her days.
Without exerting too much energy, Brodie collects relevant facts, bringing his case to awkward resolution, the details neatly dovetailing one into another. Yet the urgency of the tragedies have dimmed in the detritus of passing years, the mundane overwhelming the stirring prose of the early chapters. To be sure, there is a fourth case, sad epilogue to be resolved as well, one that puts Brodie in a more sympathetic perspective. Certainly the author proves that time and tedium diminish us all, the trenchant made less compelling by the weight of years, outrage tempered, but never grief. Grief is a constant, a wound that always aches, even when all the answers are known. Soothed, but never healed, a fact Brodie can appreciate. Luan Gaines/2008.
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