She frequently takes the readers deep into long streams of consciousness, exposing her characters’ manias and phobias, syndromes and neuroses. Even better if they loved you in return.Ītkinson’s characters tend to have bleak pasts, which she makes the most of, even if sometimes to the point of distraction. …she was just like everyone else, she wanted to love someone. And there’s a rhetorical whimsy reminiscent of some of Atkinson’s earlier books, a devil-may-care gesturing at the novel’s own fictionality, which can leave the characters threatening to float free of our trust in them. So much of the narrative is retrospective or interior that there is no element of urgency to unfolding events, which are nonetheless highly colorful. Started Early, Took My Dog is about the bruising passage of time, and whether we grow hardened to the world or become raw by rubbing against it. Hint (read spoiler alert): there’s a little whiff on that definitely deserves an after-the-fact look! Atkinson has an innate ability to come up with passages that simply have to be read twice, once when you first travel through the book and then later on, when you want to see just how effortlessly she tricked you. The plot also stands out for its reliance on coincidence and an unmistakable resistance to neat resolution, both of which run counter to the standard pleasures that crime genre generally has on offer.
Started Early, Took My Dog is no different in this regard.
An irrepressible exuberance shines throughout. She gracefully skips through and negotiates the difficult steps required to balance the reader’s need for a satisfying resolution with a realist’s view of human nature and the messiness of real-life criminality. Her playful sense of humor dances round the darkness of her themes. Tracy, a retired policewoman Tilly, a frail aging actress and Jackson Brodie are all fated to have their lives interwoven by lost, stolen, purchased, or kidnapped children - along with deceit, tragedy and murder.Īs ever, Atkinson’s prose is perfectly designed to twinkle and slice by turns. This is the fourth book, in which a single incident grows into a convoluted plot. Kate Atkinson’s novels have always been built around lost girls, from the Whitbread-winning family saga Behind the Scenes at the Museum to her current crime series. …the great novels of the world were about three things – death, money and sex. It also won the Costa Novel Award, as did her subsequent novel A God in Ruins. Her 2013 novel Life After Life won the South Bank Sky Arts Literature Prize, was shortlisted for the Women’s Prize, and voted Book of the Year for the independent booksellers associations on both sides of the Atlantic.
Her four bestselling novels featuring former detective Jackson Brodie were adapted for the BBC television series Case Histories, starring Jason Isaacs.
Kate Atkinson won the Whitbread Book of the Year prize with her first novel, Behind the Scenes at the Museum.
0 kommentar(er)
