Somewhere I had read that Kate Atkinson's Jackson Brodie series was good so I decided to read them in order. This is the fourth book I've read. I've gotten them through paperbackswap.com where I only had to pay the $.49 swap fee per book. I wouldn't continue reading this series if I was paying full price for the books.
One of the apparently favorite techniques of this author is to jump back (decades) and forth in time. I think she's done this in all of the books I've read thus far. In this book she started each segment where she went back in time with the date so at least the reader wouldn't get confused. But, when it's the present, often a character will then start reminicsing about a past experience and the reader then has to recognize that it's no longer the present.
I don't think the reminiscing by the various characters added all that much to the story. I can understand (somewhat) Jackson's memories of his sister being brought up again in this book (as it's been in the previous books) in case the reader hasn't read the previous books and wouldn't, therefore, know Jackson's history. However, I don't think all the "going back in time" that Tilly, the actress, did added anything relevant to the story. Ditto with some of the other characters. Yes, it's broadly hinted at in the book that Tilly has dementia but that was clearly demonstrated by her constantly flubbing her lines, getting confused, and misplacing things. Her memories from her youth really added nothing to the story (except more pages).
I agree with many of the one- and two-star reviewers (on Amazon) that there were too many characters in the story--it was hard to keep them straight. And, when a character reappeared, I often thought "Now, who is this?" I didn't care enough to go back and see if I could find out what role the individual played.
It took me about a month to read this book. The copy I have is 494 pages. I can easily get through a 500+ book in less than a week if it really engages me. This book clearly did not grab my interest.
Kate Atkinson has some writing skill but I really don't like the way she structures her stories. She relies too much on coincidences (which, I believe, I noted in a review of a previous book in this series) and has done so yet again in this book. For example (POSSIBLE SPOILER): Jackson is hired by a woman in New Zealand to find her birth parents in the UK; right around the same time, this woman's sibling (unbeknownst to one another) in the UK hires a private investigator named Brian Jackson to find out about his birth family. During the course of his investigation, Jackson Brodie runs into Tilly, who has (at that time) no connection to anyone involved in the investigation (other than she was recently cast in a TV show that Jackson's ex-girlfriend actress Julia also had recently joined); then, at the end of the book, Tilly just happens to appear and plays a pivotal role in the story.
As some others have noted, the ending seemed rushed (something I had noted, I believe, in a review of an earlier book in the series) and I agree. There was also one plot line that was left unresolved (POSSIBLE SPOILER): a large part of the story was Tracy buying a kid, her life with the kid and Tracy's decision to "disappear." We never learn the truth about the kid. Perhaps that story arc will continue in Book 5. END OF SPOILER
The fifth book in the series came out in 2019 ("Started Early, Took My Dog" was 2011). In spite of the fact that I'm not a big fan of the plot structure the atuhor uses, I have put that book on my paperbackswap wish list. Maybe that book will resolve the mystery of Tracy's kid.
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