I just finished one of Kate Atkinson’s earlier novels, Emotionally Weird, and it was . . . weird. Had the hardest time connecting to the characters and didn’t really latch on to anyone until the last fifty pages or so (when things took a Gothic turn, go figure).
Anyway, it prompted a Google search of Atkinson, because I wanted to remind myself of her education (which, interestingly enough, was almost exactly like that of the main character in Emotionally Weird), and I ran across a few newish things on her website, such as:
1. An Author’s Note for her most recent (and very wonderful) novel, Life after Life, which includes this statement:
As a reader I dislike historical novels where I am continually stumbling over an excess of facts although I readily understand the compulsion to include all the fascinating stuff that you’ve spent so much time reading about, but there are few things more uncomfortable for the reader than to be constantly stumbling over the pathologically recondite research of an author.
to which I say, “Hallelujah, Amen!”
2. News (to me) of a 2nd series of Case Histories, with the first episode based on Atkinson’s latest Brodie book, Started Early, Took my Dog (which I loved!), plus two original screenplays (written by whom? this scares me). Apparently this already has aired in the UK, so I’m wondering when we’ll get it over here? I liked the first series well enough — Isaacs wasn’t my idea of Brodie at all, but in the end he was fine and the plots weren’t mangled overmuch. (Though it pained me that they moved the first story out of Cambridge.)
3. This entertaining interview of Kate Atkinson by Jason Isaacs, in which he seems more like my idea of Jackson Brodie than he did in the show. He’s very charming, and they have a nice chemistry — do check it out:
Have a great weekend, everyone!
