Kate Atkinson's Started Early Playlist
I always make a compilation tape for Jackson for each book. I find it’s rather like a meditation, something I come back to on a regular basis when I’m writing because in some mysterious way it reminds me of the essence of each particular book. He, and I, like country music but that’s quite a broad church. Sometimes it’s apparent to me why I’ve chosen certain tracks and at other times I’m not at all sure of the reason. There are a lot of songs about dead mothers and orphaned children for Case Histories and When Will There Be Good News, and more than a few about death and heaven in Started Early. (Jackson’s taste is strictly on the melancholic side.) At the moment I’m writing a book that begins in 1910 and goes through the Second World War so just now I’m listening to music from the Twenties and Thirties, rather odd and not entirely to my taste. I’m looking forward to Glenn Miller and the Andrew Sisters--not Jackson’s taste at all! --Kate Atkinson
Listen to the playlist
Author One-on-One: Kate Atkinson and Lee Child
In this Amazon exclusive, we brought together authors Kate Atkinson and Lee Child and asked them to interview each other.
Lee Child: This is the fourth Jackson Brodie book. It's starting to look suspiciously like a series! What brought you back this time?
Kate Atkinson: I never intended to write more than the first one -- which was Case Histories -- but I wrote it so quickly -- which was highly unusual for me -- that I somehow felt as if I hadn't finished with the form and the characters. And then it became the 'power of three' and I thought "one more" and then I found I had unfinished business for Jackson and it became four. I honestly don't know how that happened. There is something seductive about the shape of a detective novel, or at any rate of using a detective in a novel, because it gives you a ready-- made dynamic and a reason for introducing characters to whom interesting things happen as opposed to, say, starting with a whole load of people in a bank or an office and thinking so what are their stories, and what's going to happen to them? (Although, even as I'm writing that, I'm thinking oh, actually that sounds quite intriguing).
Child: Your career so far shows you're not afraid to write whatever you choose. It's as if you've been in and out of several different rooms in the house. Is that fun?
Atkinson: Yes! I get bored quite easily but also there are so many ways of writing out there to explore. To run with the house analogy -- I love houses and there are so many lovely ones that I'll never have a chance to live in because life is short and so is money. It's the same with different styles and genres of writing. I hope before I die I manage to write a romantic novel (because I never write any kind of romance) and I would love to be able to write a children's book, but I think they are the most challenging of all.
Child: Is it easier to write the Brodie books than the others? Or harder?
Atkinson: I found the Brodie books easy to begin with, and then very difficult to finish. I haven't actually finished with him yet but at the moment he's taking a holiday somewhere restful. I found the new book really hard but I think I'd just run out of steam with the character. I'm writing something completely different at the moment and it's amazing how much energy I have for it and what a relief it feels! I think the next time I re-visit Jackson it will be with that same kind of enthusiasm -- and he (and I) will be all the better for having taken a break from each other!
Child: You write about Yorkshire with a certain exasperated affection. You were born there, right?
Atkinson: I am actually a patron of the Yorkshire Tourist Board! I think it's true of everyone in exile -- I live in Edinburgh -- no matter how mild the form, that you have a longing for what you have left behind.
I think the older you get the stronger that is -- not so much nostalgia, but a feeling that your heart is in another place. I may be kidding myself there and, like Jackson, there are certain parts of Yorkshire that I would never want to re-visit, but like him I think there are places in North Yorkshire that do mark it out as God's Own county. (I don't know why Yorkshire people are so fervently patriotic about their county!) My whole family is settled in Scotland so that kind of prevents me from moving back although I dream about that little cottage in the Dales, Aga in the kitchen, sheep bleating outside the window...
(Photo of Kate Atkinson © Martin Hunter; photo of Lee Child © Sigrid Estrada;)
*Starred Review* This is the fourth entry in Atkinson’s brilliant series featuring semi-retired detective Jackson Brodie. Feeling his age, Jackson is touring the ruined abbeys of northern England, a sucker for great landscapes and the poetry of Emily Dickinson (from which the novel’s title is taken). He’s also trying to track down the biological parents of a woman who was adopted as a child. How that case intersects with a series of crimes committed in Leeds in the 1970s is just one of the many strands Atkinson seamlessly weaves together in a plot driven by coincidence and a diamond-hard recognition of man’s darker nature. Meanwhile, lonely retired police detective Tracy Waterhouse, whose years on the force have left her “with a shell so thick there was hardly any room left inside,” witnesses a prostitute abusing a child and, in a moment of madness, offers her cash for the kid. Her odyssey as a new parent to a waif dressed in a ragged fairy costume, relayed with both tenderness and wry wit, must be one of the grandest love affairs in crime fiction, and it leads her, as all roads in Atkinson’s world do, straight to Jackson’s door. For its singular melding of radiant humor and dark deeds, this is must-reading for literary crime-fiction fans. HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: Atkinson’s new novel sees the return of soulful detective Jackson Brodie; the previous three entries in the series have, together, sold more than 525,000 copies. --Joanne Wilkinson
Review
"Brilliant...Atkinson seamlessly weaves together [strands] in a plot driven by coincidence and a diamond-hard recognition of man's darker nature...[Tracy's] odyssey as a new parent to a waif dressed in a ragged fairy costume, relayed with both tenderness and wry wit, must be one of the grandest love affairs in crime fiction...For its singular melding of radiant humor and dark deeds, this is must-reading for literary crime-fiction fans."―Joanne Wilkinson, Booklist, starred review
"The sleuthing is less important than Atkinson's fascinating take on the philosophical and emotional dimensions of her characters' lives."―Kirkus
"[The Jackson Brodie books] are an entrancing hybrid of the literary novel/detective story. Case Histories...is a classic....Atkinson's views of contemporary society can be bleak, but she has an amazing eye for kids, dogs and human fallibility." ―Mary Ann Gwinn, The Seattle Times
"Magnificently plotted...In the author's signature multilayered style, she shifts between past and present...Atkinson injects wit even in the bleakest moments...yet never loses her razor-sharp edge."―Publishers Weekly, starred review
"I can't take my nose out of Kate Atkinson's new thriller, Started Early, Took My Dog."―Alex Beam, The Boston Globe
"Mixing wry wit and gritty realism, Atkinson deftly smudges the border between literary and detective fiction-with complex, compelling characters negotiating a maze of grisly violence, dark secrets, and shadowy dangers."―Karen Holt, O, The Oprah Magazine
"Wonderful...full of artful digressions and unexpected turns, but it amply makes good on its obligations as a mystery novel to explain the who, what and why." ―Tom Nolan, Wall Street Journal
"Mold-breaking...Each one of these [Jackson Brodie] books, including this latest, is a delight: an intricate construction that assembles itself before the reader's eyes, populated by idiosyncratic, multidimensional characters and written with shrewd, mordant grace. They are in some respects mystery novels, but they're written with a literary skill uncommon in that genre, and in a mode -- the tragicomic -- that few but the most adept novelists can pull off in any genre."―Laura Miller, Salon
Ms. Atkinson writes passages that simply have to be read twice, once when you first travel through the book and then later, when you want to see just how she tricked you...Ms. Atkinson remains a wonderful stylist and Grade A schemer...She was never confined to the crime genre, has written in assorted other modes and excels at them all. Whatever she goes on to write, she leaves Jackson Brodie at a suspenseful and pivotal moment. Future installments are well worth waiting for." ―Janet Maslin, New York Times
"Every time I hear Kate Atkinson has a new novel on the way, I'm filled with delight. I look forward to many authors' books with pleasure and interest, but Atkinson is such a virtuoso that my brain starts fizzing like a glass of bubbly even before I crack the covers. Started Early, Took My Dog does not disappoint...A witty, moving, suspenseful and always surprising story about the things we do for love...Atkinson's books stake out their own territory on the border between mysteries and literary fiction. There are crimes in this book...but Atkinson is just as concerned with crimes of the heart, and with the unexpected consequences of good intentions. She layers plot and time periods with consummate skill, creating novels that work like elegant jazz improvisations, taking us onto amazing yet believable paths that eventually weave together into an even more astonishing result...Atkinson, as always, brings something fresh to [themes as old as storytelling].―Colette Bancroft, St. Petersburg Times
About the Author
Kate Atkinson's first novel, Behind the Scenes at the Museum, was named England's Whitbread Book of the Year in 1996. Since then, she has written eleven more ground-breaking, bestselling books. She lives in Edinburgh, Scotland.
