Big Sky

Big Sky – by Kate Atkinson

Kate Atkinson’s twelfth novel, and the twelfth one that I’ve read. I can’t think of any other author that gives me such a sense of excitement whenever an upcoming novel of hers is announced.  I devour these as soon as I can, and I’ve never been disappointed.  Her style is so unique, so quirky, and so unlike anything else I’ve ever read by anyone. Although her stories are often sad or outright depressing, her character interactions and observations tend to make me howl out loud with laughter throughout the book. Such was the case here as well.

This is her fifth “Jackson Brodie” novel. Jackson is a detective, yet these books really don’t fit into the crime-solving mold that one typically thinks of when they think of detective books. In fact, Atkinson’s strength seems to be more about human behavior, interactions, and observations than in telling a story.  I don’t really remember most of the plots of her earlier books, but that doesn’t stop me from distinctly remembering that I’ve loved most of them.

The underlying theme in this book revolves around human trafficking.  Probably the most depressing topic that can possibly come to mind.  Although Atkinson’s approach is lighter than most, this definitely isn’t a “funny” nor a “comedy” book; even though as I’ve already stated, I laughed out loud many times. This is mainly due to how she treats her characters.  Sadly, her main characters are never happy people.  Every time we meet a male protagonist, we read about his wife/ex-wife/girlfriend who always seems to be a materialistic, unsympathetic, cruel bint. Whenever one of the main characters is a woman, it seems like her husband/father is always a chauvinistic, clueless, lazy sloth.  Our heroes put up with their abrasive counterparts because, well, I guess they feel they can’t really do much better.  Case in point is Jackson Brodie’s ex-partner Julia (the mother of his son). We never hear her open her mouth without taking some sadistic passive-aggressive swipe at her former lover.  But Jackson carries on, burying the obvious wounds deep down.  I have to say it again, though, Atkinson’s magic is she somehow manages to contort humor in all of these interactions.  Maybe it’s because we shake our head and think “Geez. I’m glad my wife/husband/etcetera doesn’t treat ME like that.”

There are a LOT of characters in this book, yet that didn’t take away the enjoyment for me.  It seemed like the first quarter of this book never let us digest any of the characters once we meet them. As soon as we met them, and got to know them a bit, Atkinson would quickly close the chapter, and we would meet a brand-new group of people in the NEXT chapter. Everything does eventually connect, however, and my theory is that Atkinson is able to do this so well because her prose is so interesting and engaging that we don’t mind jumping from subplot to subplot.  I loved each chapter so much, that I simply never got bored and drifted off, nor did I skim any pages due to ennui. To be fair, there were a couple of loose bits that got wrapped up at the end that seemed a tad forced.  You almost wonder if the author had redone a few things in the beginning and/or middle, that some of the closures might not have seemed so contrived.

I think that if I lived in some sort of bizarre alternate universe where it was possible for Kate Atkinson to write 15,000 novels, I don’t think I would ever read another book by any other author.  Reading her reviews on Amazon have proven, though, that not everyone agrees with me.  She’s definitely an acquired taste. For my taste buds, however, there simply isn’t anybody better.