Life in a Northern Virginia suburb of Washington, D.C. B.M.A.T.C., and Etruscan typewriter erasers. Blogged by David Gorsline.
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Case Histories,
a novel by Kate Atkinson
Atkinson's latest comic novel has more elements of the conventional whodunit than her previous efforts (including Emotionally Weird and Human Croquet), but it remains a story in her own voice, by turns breezy and morbid. Jackson Brodie, private investigator in today's Cambridge, England, is called upon to investigate two cold cases, one of them a seeming act of random violence in 1994 that left an 18-year-old girl dead, and the other even colder, concerning the unsolved disappearance of 3-year-old Olivia Land in 1970. Along the way, he becomes entangled in the lives of his clients (including the amusing eccentrics Amelia and Julia, sisters to the vanished Olivia) and in three other cases of disappearance and violence, not to mention the unresolved history of his own childhood. Atkinson plots like someone playing a game of checkers, an intricate start followed by sudden reversals, doublings, and quick resolutions. It's difficult to outline her tales without giving away too many plot points, and there are a lot of them. But consider:
Rosemary had slipped out of her own life very easily. She had shown no tenacity for it at all when she discovered that the baby girl she was carrying when Olivia disappeared had a twin, not Victor's longed-for son, but a tumorous changeling that grew and swelled insider her unchallenged. By the time anyone realized it signaled a life ending rather than a life beginning, it was too late. Annabelle lived for only a few hours and her cancerous counterpart was removed, but Rosemary was dead within six months.
In the course of the book, someone appears out the past that no one was looking for; a lost daughter is found without ever being recognized as such; and another daughter is lost but still lives. Much of the plot turns on characters who have dissociated action from intent. And Atkinson is capable of slipping in a sly allusion to Henry James under most readers' radar. She also owes a little to W. S. Gilbert in the whimsical, topsy-turvy way she resolves the novel. She's asking a lot of us by granting a long-held wish through a miraculous inheritance, and by satisfying another character's plight with a quick change in sexual orientation. But we forgive her, and hope for more novels to come. posted: 2:48:21 PM |
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Three actors play emotionally-damaged characters in current New York shows: Sarah Paulson in The Glass Menagerie, Kelli O'Hara in The Light in the Piazza, and Michael Stuhlbarg in The Pillowman.
So the trick to playing these characters is not to play the damage so much as the constant effort to escape or grow past it: much as the authors must have done in creating them.
posted: 8:30:38 AM |
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Matt Bai on Mike Judge's cartoon comedy "King of the Hill" and what we can learn from it:
The important thing here is that Hank Hill may be a Texan, but he and his friends could live in any of the fast-developing rural and exurban areas around Columbus or Phoenix or Atlanta that are bound to become the political weathervanes of the new century.
* * * ...the show's 10th season next year could be its last; despite decent ratings, Fox has been buying fewer episodes and shifting its time slot, and there are rumors that the network may want to substitute yet another new reality show in its place. This is odd: after all, there is more reality about American life in five minutes of "King of the Hill" than in a full season of watching Paris Hilton prance around a farm in high heels. posted: 8:25:34 AM |
 D. Gorsline, Proprietor
   
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