Dolls within dolls

Boxes within boxes, dolls within dolls, worlds within worlds. Everything was connected. Everything in the whole world.

Kate Atkinson, One Good Turn

Kate Atkinson's second Jackson Brodie novel, One Good Turn (2006), reminds me of a typical episode of Seinfeld, the 1990's situation comedy. No, it's not funny. Rather there are several characters with their individual subplots that turn out to be connected in surprising ways. Coincidences abound, yet because they are deliberate and expertly crafted, these coincidences are not as objectionable as they might be in some other novel. The way the different stories tie together is the whole point.

The story starts with a road rage incident in Edinburgh, one driver attacking another with a baseball bat. Martin, a lonely and ordinarily passive crime writer, intervenes, saving a man's life while putting his own life in danger. Brodie, a former cop and former private investigator, also happens to be on hand. He is in Edinburgh with Julia, a mismatched girlfriend who is appearing in a play.

Soon there are murders, seemingly unrelated to that road rage incident. A female cop doesn't know whether Brodie is a criminal, a witness or really an ex-cop with more insight than she has, but she falls for him anyway. Meanwhile her teenage son somehow winds up with the only copy of Martin's missing book.

Another subplot concerns a crooked homebuilder in a coma and a wife who hopes he never recovers. And there is so much else going on, including repeated references to Russian dolls, which turn out to be an apt metaphor for the entire novel.

Atkinson took a chance building a story around coincidence, when that is something most quality writers take pains to avoid. And she gets away with it.