One Good Turn: A Novel
by Kate Atkinson
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Book Summary Information
Author: Kate AtkinsonEdition: Paperback
Published: 2007-09-10
ISBN: 0316012823
Number of pages: 448
Publisher: Back Bay Books
Book Reviews of One Good Turn: A Novel
Book Review: This matryoshka is missing some dolls
Summary: 3 Stars
If "One Good Turn" is approached as standard mystery fare, the reader will be disappointed. Kate Atkinson does not fashion her `mysteries' by following tried-and-true conventions, which can be a good thing if done well. (I'm not even sure this could be called a mystery.) In this novel, we are given a number of truly wacky characters that are thrown together in some sort of a melee, and then it's up to us to see if we can keep up with the meandering narrative that mostly shows how these people's lives intersect over a span of three days. That sort of six-degrees-of-separation thing is a tough trick to pull off, and it must have been tougher than I thought because the intersection of these lives hinges on a great number of coincidences. A few readers have mentioned the film "Crash," and that's a good comparison.
It's a unique read; these people are really odd and everything that happens to them is equally bizarre. A major portion of the book is dedicated to their back-stories and every now and then, there's a bit of action to create some suspense. It's really all about the characters--what they're thinking, what they're wishing, why they are who they are, etc. After a long time, one actually wonders if there's a plot hiding here somewhere. As it turns out, there is, but by then, it's no longer as pressing a need as it was earlier and even seemed like an afterthought. By the time it rolls around, I've lost interest. The author's use of the nested matryoshka dolls as metaphor for a multi-layered series of events, one revealing another, then another, so on, was wasted on a rather feeble story. I thought her prequel, "Case Histories," was exceptionally well done, but for me, "One Good Turn" doesn't compare favorably. So, three stars for shrewd characterization and a ton of genuinely hilarious paragraphs (that wry British humor gets me every time); the plot, on the other hand, was too little too late.
Summary of One Good Turn: A Novel
Kate Atkinson began her career with a winner: Behind the Scenes at the Museum, which captured the Whitbread First Novel Award. She followed that success with four other books, the last of which was Case Histories, her first foray into the mystery-suspense-detective genre. In that book she introduced detective Jackson Brodie, who reopened three cold cases and ended up a millionaire. A great deal happened in-between.In One Good Turn Jackson returns, following his girlfriend, Julia the actress, to the Fringe Festival in Edinburgh. He manages to fall into all kinds of trouble, starting with witnessing a brutal attack by "Honda Man" on another man stuck in a traffic jam. Is this road rage or something truly sinister? Another witness is Martin Canning, better known as Alex Blake, the writer. Martin is a shy, withdrawn, timid sort who, in a moment of unlikely action, flings a satchel at the attacker and spins him around, away from his victim. Gloria Hatter, wife of Graham, a millionaire property developer who is about to have all his secrets uncovered, is standing in a nearby queue with a friend when the attack takes place. There is nastiness afoot, and everyone is involved. Nothing is coincidental.
Through a labyrinthine plot which is hard to follow because the points of view are constantly changing, the real story is played out, complete with Russians, false and mistaken identities, dead bodies, betrayals, and all manner of violent encounters. Jackson gets pulled in to the investigation by Louise Monroe, a police detective and mother of an errant 14-year-old. There might be yet another novel to follow which will take up the connection those two forge in this book. Or, Jackson might just go back to France and feed apples to the local livestock.
Atkinson has written an enjoyable and lively story of no degrees of separation among the most unlikely cast of characters. Some plot lines have been left to drift, but it does hang together in a satisfying fashion. --Valerie Ryan
"Atkinson's bright voice rings on every page, and her sly and wry observations move the plot as swiftly as suspense turns the pages of a thriller."-San Francisco Chronicle
Two years after the events of Case Histories left him a retired millionaire, Jackson Brodie has followed Julia, his occasional girlfriend and former client, to
"Compelling and always entertaining." -
"One Good Turn crackles with energy and imagination." -
"Atkinson's tart prose sparkles." -Entertainment Weekly
"Entertaining both as a murder mystery and as a sprawling multi-character study in the best post-Nashville tradition." -The Onion
"A remarkable feat of storytelling bravado." -
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