When Will There be Good News?

by Kate Atkinson | Literature & Fiction |
ISBN: 9780552772457 Global Overview for this book
Registered by wingmiketrollwing on 1/31/2009
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2 journalers for this copy...
Journal Entry 1 by wingmiketrollwing on Saturday, January 31, 2009
It's always a great pleasure to read Kate Atkinson. In this one, a blurb quote has the Sunday Telegraph saying, "Atkinson's genius is her sure control of plot." In fact that's precisely what she doesn't have, but it hardly matters. She has a wonderful ear for dialogue, the clichés and formulae people use to negotiate life. She loves to highlight these with ironic quotation marks. Almost at the off, she delivers one of her trademark vignettes:

" The bus dropped them on the big road and then carried on to somewhere else. It was 'a palaver' getting them all off the bus. Their mother held Joseph under one arm like a parcel and with her other hand she struggled to open out his newfangled buggy. Jessica and Joanna shared the job of lifting the shopping off the bus. The dog saw to himself. 'No one ever helps,' their mother said. 'Have you noticed that?' They had.
'Your father's country fucking idyll,' their mother said as the bus drove away in a blue haze of fumes and heat. 'Don't you swear,' she added automatically, 'I'm the only person allowed to swear.' "

In just a few lines, Kate Atkinson delivers the family set-up, gift-wrapped. It's this kind of writing that grips the reader in her brilliant first novel, Behind the Scenes at the Museum. I scarcely remember the story, only its rich portrayal of family relationships. Atkinson has since struck a rich vein, especially among female readers, with her hero Jackson Brodie, former police detective. In her Brodie stories, Case Histories, One Good Turn and now WWTBGN?, she slips north of the border to Edinburgh, the pace and black humour of her narrative echoing Brookmyre at his best.

But it's still Atkinson's character portrayal and dialogue that lift her above the normal run of crime story writers. Her plots rely far too much on coincidence to be seriously plausible, but the reader is having too much fun to care. Still, I wonder how good she could be if she really worked at the weft of her plot?

In WWTBGN? we meet Dr Joanne Hunter, Edinburgh GP, working mother and husband of Glasgow wheeler-dealer, Neil Hunter. Joanna is happy to adopt her husband's name to distance herself from her past. As the small child, Joanna Mason. she survived a frenzied knife attack in which her mother and siblings were slaughtered by the maniacal Andrew Decker in a country lane. This episode is disturbingly reminiscent of the real life killings in which Josie Russell was the little girl survivor who won the nation's admiration.

Then there is Louise, police detective and also party to a shaky marriage. (As she says coldly to the girl from the insurance company, 'Detective Chief Inspector Monroe. Not Mrs Brennan.' Louise is protective of Alison Needler, whose ex-husband David is a serious threat to Alison's safety. She also grows concerned for Joanna when Andrew Decker is released from jail after serving 30 years of a "life" term.

But the real hero of this novel is none of the above. It is Joanna's nanny, Reggie (Regina) Chase, 16-years-old and looking all of 12. Reggie is bright, sassie, courageous, kind-hearted and generous, completely lacking in self pity. Reggie is 'Half child, half unstoppable force of nature.' She contradicts her impoverished background by studying Latin and Greek in preparation for a degree course in Classics. Meanwhile her sociopathic teenage brother Billy is into drugs and crime, hell-bent on self-destruction.

Jackson Brodie inevitably plays a less heroic part by becoming a train crash victim. His life is saved by Reggie, who gives him CPR at the crash site. Thereafter, (no spoilers) there are more coincidences as the lives of these characters intertwine. Kate Atkinson works all these plot elements into a nice neat pretzel, and the reader is not in the least bothered that it feels a tad contrived. Great fun! I look forward to reading more of Atkinson's work.

Journal Entry 2 by wingmiketrollwing at Coffee#1, Albany Road, Cardiff in Cardiff, Wales United Kingdom on Thursday, August 6, 2009

Released 14 yrs ago (8/6/2009 UTC) at Coffee#1, Albany Road, Cardiff in Cardiff, Wales United Kingdom

WILD RELEASE NOTES:

WILD RELEASE NOTES:

Oops! Not in fact a wild release. Took it along the road to the PO for shipment to mrbaggins1!

Journal Entry 3 by mrbaggins1 from Johannesburg, Gauteng South Africa on Thursday, August 27, 2009
Received as a surprise today together with "Bad Science" - Book somewhat battered at the bottom and the parcel was resealed by the post office, so maybe the parcel was used as a bargaining tool during the recent post office strike that now seemingly is over. Thank you. I'll release it when I'm done.

Journal Entry 4 by mrbaggins1 at 44 Stanley: Bean There Coffee in Johannesburg, Gauteng South Africa on Saturday, November 14, 2009

Released 14 yrs ago (11/14/2009 UTC) at 44 Stanley: Bean There Coffee in Johannesburg, Gauteng South Africa

WILD RELEASE NOTES:

WILD RELEASE NOTES:

Will be releasing this when I go and buy some Fair Trade Coffee this morning. Received as an RABCK from Miketroll some time ago. Heartgirl's mother has read it and I'm now wild releasing it. MT TBR is way too big and I will not get around to it soon, so better let it travel for someone else to read. Thanks for sharing Mike and enjoy the Med Cruise.

Enjoy and please journal.


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