One Good Turn

One Good Turn - by Kate Atkinson

Here’s essentially how it happens: It’s a busy traffic day somewhere in Scotland due to some sort of festival.  In the bumper to bumper traffic, one car hits another.  The two drivers get out, and they’re angry.  One has a baseball bat and he’s about to attack.  A “Good Samaritan” happens to walk by on the street and sees what is about to go down.  Instinctively, he throws a satchel containing his laptop computer and the would be assailant.  He doesn't really hurt the guy, but he delays the attack just long enough for the police to arrive and arrest the bat wielding thug.  

That’s really about it.

For the few people that are involved in this incident, including a couple of bystanders, author Kate Atkinson dives into these people’s lives before, during, and after this event.  Why are we reading about all of this?  After all, these people just happen to be at a certain place at an exact time, yet Kate Atkinson starts telling us their life stories.  A bit strange, you might say, but this really isn’t that much out of the ordinary for Atkinson.  She has the ability to go on and on about not much of anything, but still keep the reader entertained.  As our story (which only takes place over about two days) unwinds, we find that in some bizarre way, all of these characters are somehow connected with each other, and we see many paths cross amongst these random individuals.  One of them being Jackson Brodie, who’s one of Kate Atkinson’s regulars.  Jackson is a private detective (retired, actually in this book), yet don’t ever think for one minute that these books resemble any sort of crime solving mysteries and whatnot.  Yes, there are bizarre events that bear scrutiny in this story, but Jackson is really just another character within the pages with life happening all around him.

Of all of Kate Atkinson’s books that I’ve read, this one was the least depressing.  She has a subconscious trait of telling stories that center around hard luck characters that seem to be dealt many of life’s unfair blows.  It seems like every character in all of her books is either in a rotten marriage, a rotten relationship or has a rotten family.  Sometimes all three.  That’s not really to say this book is all sunshine and roses. It’s just that the overall doom and gloom isn’t quite as prevalent here as in her other books.  It’s also nice that, since this story only takes place over a few days, there aren’t that many different people within the pages for the reader to have to keep track.  Sometimes you need a mainframe computer to keep up with all the people in an Atkinson book, yet there’s only a dozen or so main players to keep score of throughout this particular story.

Still, Atkinson’s books are an acquired taste.  Not a lot ever really happens in the “action” department. Her strength is mainly character revelation and development, and she always  dives deep into the soul of many of the main players.  She has a way of hooking you into these individuals’ lives, making you want to cry for their pitiful circumstances, yet howl in laughter at the author’s off the wall observations.

Most of what this author writes is well appreciated by me, and I felt that this was probably one of her strongest overall.  

It was nice to see a “good turn” set the stage for a story in Atkinson’s repertoire.