Case Histories by Kate Atkinson (WEBSITE)

Her Grace’s rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars

Genre: mystery

I read it as a: paperback

Source: Public Library

Length: 310 pp

Published by: Back Bay Books (1 Sept 2004)

This first installment in Kate Atkinson’s Jackson Brodie series introduces, well, Jackson Brodie, private detective and former detective inspector. Case Histories starts off with three different stories being introduced to readers by way of short chapters outlining the characters and reasons we should be interested in them. In short, they are given as case histories. The various stories cross paths in one way or another, whether through a chance encounter in a park or simply through the character of Brodie himself, acting as detective for all parties. The stories are all varied, from a missing child in the ‘70s to a murdered young woman in the ‘90s to an axe murderer’s sister looking for her lost niece. 

I enjoyed this a great deal. I had read one of Atkinson’s books a long time ago, Life After Life, and was bored to death by it. I’m not sure if it was just that I wasn’t in the mood for that particular book at that particular moment or what, but I didn’t like it. I steered clear of her books after that, but decided to give this series a go when I came across the BBC series Case Histories, starring my current mega crush Jason Isaacs. I loved the show and thought I would try the titular series, and I am very glad I did. Atkinson’s writing style might take a little getting used to, but it reads easily and the stories were fun.

I have to say that for such an alpha male, Jackson sure gets his ass kicked plenty. I think it is funny, but it was also perhaps established with the very first time he is introduced in the book, when he’s sitting in his car listening to a ladies’ talk show, thinking about his daughter, who he loves, his ex-wife, who really did one over on him, and he is watching a woman to find out if she’s having an affair. He is complex because he is very much an alpha male – former soldier, former cop, current private detective – but he also is ruled by the women in his life and he seems quite happy for that to be the case. He’s protective of most people he comes across, even if he doesn’t really like them. 

This story also took a look at different ways to grieve and to think of people who are no longer here. Theo idealized his daughter, Laura, even though she wasn’t perfect. He himself seems to think that it is surprising she was his daughter because he thought she was so perfect. He said to himself that he loved Laura more than his other daughter, Jenny. I think if he had not had such a clear image of her in his mind he would have had an even harder time with his grief because he would have had to reconcile Laura’s imperfections with the image he had of her. Probably he would have felt even guiltier for not loving his other daughter as much, too, since he could have had a closer relationship with Jenny. The Land parents clearly favored Olivia over her three older sisters, and it was obvious to them all. It made Olivia’s disappearance harder on her sisters because she was their favorite, too, and there was nowhere for them to go to visit her or remember her. The not knowing is, I think, harder than knowing for sure someone is dead, because you don’t know what is happening to them, what kind of life they are living, or if they even remember you. It would be so much worse, in my opinion, not to know the fate of a loved one than to know for certain they were dead. Lots of complexity in the various plots, which is fantastic. Most mysteries seem kind of one-dimensional to me. This one is more literary than a lot of others I’ve read. 

I am looking forward to reading the rest of the series!

Favorite part/ lines (potential spoilers!):

• Novels gave you a completely false idea about life, they told lies and they implied there were endings when in reality there were no endings, everything just went on and on and on.
• God and Sylvia had been on speaking terms for almost as long as Amelia could remember. Did she really think he spoke to her? She was delusional, surely? At the very least a hysteric. Hearing voices, like Joan of Arc. In fact, it was Joan of Arc she used to speak to, wasn’t it? Even before Rosemary died or Olivia disappeared. Had anyone ever entertained the possibility that Sylvia was schizophrenic? If God spoke to Amelia she would presume she had gone insane.
• It was an education (although one Jackson had already been subject to) because Theo was extraordinarily good at documenting the banal details of failure, the litany of tiny flaws and cracks that were nothing to an outsider but looked like canyons when you were on the inside – “He buys me carnations, carnations are crap, every woman knows that so why doesn’t he?” “He never thinks to run a bit of Toilet Duck round the bowl, even though I leave it out where he can’t miss it and I’ve asked him, I’ve asked him a hundred times.” “If he ever does any ironing it’s ‘Look at me, I’m ironing, look how well I’m doing it, I iron much better than you, I’m the best, I do it properly.’” “He’d get me my breakfast in bed if I asked him to, but I don’t want to have to ask.” Did men know how much they got on women’s nerves?
• Boys took a long time to become men but daughters were women from the kickoff.
• What did you do when the worst thing that could happen to you had already happened – how did you live your life then? You had to hand it to Theo Wyre, just carrying on living required a kind of strength and courage that most people didn’t have.
• What if reincarnation existed, what if you came back as a pedophile? But then what would you have had to do in the first place to deserve that? What did the holy girls come back as? Flocks of doves, groves of trees?
• But Jackson couldn’t make Marlee safe, he couldn’t make anyone safe. The only time you were safe was when you were dead. Theo was the world’s greatest worrier, but the one thing he didn’t worry about anymore was whether or not his daughter was safe.
• “She’ll spend it on drugs,” she said to Julia as they walked away from the girl. “She can spend it on what she wants,” Julia said. “In fact drugs sound like a good idea. If I was in her position I would spend money on drugs.” “She’s in that position because of drugs.” “You don’t know that. You don’t know anything about her.”
• “Is ‘macheted’ a verb?” Amelia asked Julia. “Don’t think so.” Well, that was the end then, she was Americanizing words. Civilization would fall.
• A lot of people thought Theo spoiled his girls, but how could you spoil a child – by neglect, yes, but not by love. You had to give them all the love you could, even though giving that much love could cause you pain and anguish and horror and, in the end, love could destroy you. Because they left, they went to university and husband, they went to Canada and they went to the grave.
• There was that survey, years ago, that found that women didn’t feel threatened by a man carrying the Guardian or wearing a CND badge. Jackson had wondered at the time how many rapists started carrying a Guardian around with them. Look at Ted Bundy. Stick your arm in a plaster cast and women think you’re safe. No woman was ever truly safe. It didn’t matter if you were as tough as Sigourney Weaver in Alien Resurrection or Linda Hamilton in Terminator 2, because wherever you went there were men.
• The clavicle was tiny and fragile, like an animal’s, a rabbit or a hare, the broken wishbone of a bird. Jackson kissed it reverently because he knew it was the holiest relic he would ever find.
• “To my friend, Mr. Jackson Brodie, for being kind.” He had cried when her solicitor had read that out to him. Cried, because he hadn’t been particularly kind to her, cried because she didn’t have a better friend, that she had died alone, without a hand to hold.