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After reading Case Histories and One Good Turn I was looking forward to this and I was not disappointed.
Such intelligent writing with humour and class.
Thank you for a wonderful week of reading!

Coincidence as defined by Webster "the occurrence of events that happen at the same time by accident but seem to have some connection." Kate Atkinson is a perfectionist when it comes to coincidence. Her mystery thrillers are made of such. Into each one she weaves a story that grabs us and soon we are ensconced in the telling of the tale.

How to describe the beginning? A full cut madness that results in a family torn apart, one little girl, Joanna survives. She becomes a physician, a caring person with a husband and a baby son. Her Nanny is a young girl named Reggie. Reggie without family except for an outlaw brother, and the family she wants is with Joanna. Jackson Brodie, a private investigator embarking on a train trip to London, after traveling to Edinburgh to ascertain if he has a son. The train runs off its track and after almost bleeding to death he is saved by Reggie. The investigating office is Louise, an old friend to Brody. Louise has also brought news to Joanna. Coincidence? You decide.

One of the most interesting aspects of reading a Kate Atkinson novel is her mission to bring us the reason for living. How and why do we go on after trauma and grief. What do we do when we find the person we are married to may be the wrong one. When our loved ones die how do we go on? How do we know we have found what we need in life?

This is the third novel with Louise and Jackson Brodie as main characters. We know do we not that they are meant for each other? But Kate Atkinson seems to knock off the men in these women's lives. Why is that? Will Jackson Brodie and Louise find true happiness? I think not and that is not just a coincidence!

Highly Recommended. prisrob 11-08-08

One Good Turn: A Novel

Behind the Scenes at the Museum: A Novel

I gave up reading this after the first few chapters, the dog body count was far too high for me to enjoy it, never mind the human one! I get enough depression and disaster in my own life I don't need to read it here. I usually love Kate Atkinson but every so often she produces a right minger (usually when she's trying too hard - see 'Emotionally Weird')

I hope the next one is more readable.

'The heat rising up from the tarmac seemed to get trapped between the thick hedges that towered above their heads like battlements.'

The novel opens with a horrific attack on a family by a stranger. Thirty years on the sole survivor - now Dr Hunter, married and with a child of her own - will be tested by extraordinary events once again. The interlocking plot lines are not equally successful; Reggie was my favourite and her relationship with Dr Joanna Hunter is genuinely affecting. Jackson Brodie and Louise Monroe, familiar from previous novels, have both recently married other people despite their mutual attraction. In both cases that stretched belief somewhat and seemed more like a device so that they couldn't get together. Marriages are unsuccessful, families broken, throughout the story line.

Co-incidence and fate are core to the novel. Decisions have repercussions. A train crash, identity theft and kidnapping connect the characters and knit the different strands together. Somehow Atkinson does all this with ease and for our enjoyment.

At the end of the novel Brodie muses that while you are alive you should `Find the answers, solve the mysteries, be a good detective. Be a crusader.' Atkinson gives us crime fiction which does that with class.

This is the best book I've read for ages - the format is easy to get to grips with and lends itself to my style of reading (short chapters - easy to dip in and out of).

What I loved most were the surprises and twists - so often it's really easy to predict how things are going to pan out - not so with this book. The standrad of writing is fabulous - literary and intelligent plus a very juicy plot. I can't wait for the next installment!