»One Good Turn

Kate Atkinson's second novel (a mystery? a comedy of errors? a drama?) featuring the hapless Scotsman-without-a-country Jackson Brodie irritated me. The first third of the novel, ostensibly a setup for a delicate plot rich with characters, jumped about without staying in one place long enough for me to appreciate the personalities or twists introduced; the remainder of the book, building on its themes, instead left loose ends for some of the minor characters, while telegraphing some of the more significant resolution in a way that made me not want to finish the dam' thing.

The novel, set in Edinburgh during the Fringe Festival, lacks detail of both place and of dialogue. The author, also a Scot, shows the reader a city full of Eastern European intrigue but lacking in traditional Scotch character. Much like a television drama, the tension between Brodie and his stage-actress lover, the flamboyant Julia from Case Histories, never plays in any satifsying way. No passionate dialogues, no climactic scenes, but rather an assumption that the reader will accept the way in which their relationship develops. This book was nowhere as enjoyable as the Witold Rybczynski essay with the same title, but about the evolution of the screwdriver.

Aside: hapless comes into English via Old Norse, from the proto-Germanic root *khapan meaning "convenient, fit". The connotation of being without luck dates back almost a millennium.