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Tarfumes.com - Case Histories: A Novel
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List Price: $14.99
Our Price: $10.19
Your Save: $ 4.80 ( 32% )
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
Manufacturer: Back Bay Books
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Average Customer Rating:  
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Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 813
EAN: 9780316010702
ISBN: 0316010707
Label: Back Bay Books
Manufacturer: Back Bay Books
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 336
Publication Date: 2005-10-17
Publisher: Back Bay Books
Studio: Back Bay Books
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Editorial Reviews:
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Case one: A little girl goes missing in the night.
Case two: A beautiful young office worker falls victim to a maniac's apparently random attack.
Case three: A new mother finds herself trapped in a hell of her own making - with a very needy baby and a very demanding husband - until a fit of rage creates a grisly, bloody escape.
Thirty years after the first incident, as private investigator Jackson Brodie begins investigating all three cases, startling connections and discoveries emerge . . .
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Spotlight customer reviews:
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Customer Rating:
Summary: A Terrific Story
Comment: I read for story. If characters are developed it's a definite plus. If the writing is interesting and gets to the point with an economy of useful words, I'm hooked. I was hooked on this story (stories) and finished it in three days. Then I went out and got "When Will There Be Good News". If your tastes are like mine, you'll enjoy Atkinson.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Demands to be read a second time
Comment: Like all Kate Atkinson books, you feel you need to read it again. The plot and the characters are very intertwined and it is only on a second reading that some of the subtle connections become clear. This is not to say that you can't understand the story on a single read-through, but rather that there is a richness obtained from a second reading.
I was a little unsatisfied by the Caroline storyline. Her "present day" story never seemed to intertwine with the other characters; she was only linked to other characters by the past. If her present day storyline was better integrated, this would have been a 5-star novel for me.
Customer Rating:
Summary: (3.5) "Time was a thief, he stole your life away."
Comment:
As her recent novel has shown (When Will There Be Good News?), Atkinson's talent has developed over the years, a unique style that is more an aggregation of circumstances than fluid narrative. As the title indicates, there are three mysteries that form the crux of this novel: a little girl disappears one summer night when sleeping outdoors with her sister (1970); a young woman is savagely killed her first day on a new job (1994); and a small family, mother, baby and husband are caught in an impetuous rage that ends in a bloodbath one Saturday afternoon (1979). Each of these scenarios is riveting, the image of a little girl clutching her "blue mouse" the night she disappears; Theo, a desperate, morbidly obese father who cannot escape that one day when his daughter died; and Michelle, whose life is irrevocably altered, her husband dead, an axe embedded in his head.
These characters experience their finest moments in tragedy, the events etched in their minds, scenes of loss and death. It is in the mundane details of the years that follow that the stories falter, the dramas overshadowed by the tedium of daily living, surviving by endurance of the ordinary. Jackson Brodie, a private investigator with a police background, is no exception, bored by his current surveillance of a wife suspected of infidelity. Brodie isn't much encouraged by his new cases either: two middle-aged women who have located a clue to their missing sister's fate all thirty years later; Theo's insistent need for closure, his unwavering desire to finally learn who killed Laura and truncated his life to a daily repetition of the crime scene; and an elderly woman who hires Brodie to locate missing cats, but mostly to fill the empty hours of her days.
Without exerting too much energy, Brodie collects relevant facts, bringing his case to awkward resolution, the details neatly dovetailing one into another. Yet the urgency of the tragedies have dimmed in the detritus of passing years, the mundane overwhelming the stirring prose of the early chapters. To be sure, there is a fourth case, sad epilogue to be resolved as well, one that puts Brodie in a more sympathetic perspective. Certainly the author proves that time and tedium diminish us all, the trenchant made less compelling by the weight of years, outrage tempered, but never grief. Grief is a constant, a wound that always aches, even when all the answers are known. Soothed, but never healed, a fact Brodie can appreciate. Luan Gaines/2008.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Tedious and Depressing
Comment: I was given this book from my mother in law. We are both HUGE readers and trade off books to save money. Neither of us is too picky about what we read because we read so much. Well, I never got her perspective on the book before I started it so can't say what she thought passing it off to me. I started it and after a few chapters put it down and didn't pick it up again for about 6 months. Until there was nothing at all left to read in my house and then I started it again.
It is so tedious. The characters are ugly, with no discernable redeeming qualities. It actually depressed me to read it, however, I was committed to finishing it. I truly can't say anything good. I can't understand the praise for this book.
Oh, and I gave it one star, not sure why two popped up on this review. Oh well.
Customer Rating:
Summary: A Compelling Read
Comment: First Sentence: How lucky were they?
Ex-cop Jackson Brodie has three cases on which he is working. In 1970, Olivia, the youngest of three sisters disappears after she and another sister spent the night in their backyard tent. Their father has now died. When cleaning out his desk, the two middle sisters find Olivia's favorite toy. What happened to Olivia? In
1979, an overwhelmed wife and mother reaches the breaking point with disastrous results. Her sister wants Jackson to find Tanya, the niece she promised to care for. In 1997, a businessman's daughter was murdered during her first day of work in her fathers' author. Who killed her?
Along with the three cases, Jackson has his own issues including an ex-wife and Binky Rain, a 90-year-old lady who believes someone is stealing her cats, and accidents that are not accidental.
Ms. Atkinson's book was an absolute delight to read. Think macramé; lots of different colored and textured threads skillfully woven together to create a wonderful end product. It may bother some, but I love her use of parenthetical phrases and her imagery. All the elements are there; humor, pathos, suspense, tragedy, emotion, irony and a small touch of paranormal.
Her books are character driven, and a range of characters there is. We get to know them all but particularly Jackson is revealed to us as the story unfolds. There are two sisters who are classic in the way one goads the other with behavior and occasional crass references.
In some ways, this isn't the easiest book to read just from the way it is structured, and it's not a gripping page-turner in the usual sense. It is, however, a page-turner in that I became so involved with the stories, I had to know what would happen next and resolution to each case. Atkinson has an unusual and compelling style that is wry, slightly noir and absolutely wonderful.
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