Customer Reviews: Read 54 more reviews...
 I wish I cared July 25, 2008
This was the most frustrating book I've read in years. I finished it because I'd enjoyed Case Histories and so kept thinking it would improve, but it didn't. The book starts with a good piece of action and then drifts into the characters' streams of consciousness. As most of the characters aren't particularly interesting or else are not believable, their consciousness is never more than an irritating diversion from the occasional page of plot. I wish I cared about them or what they did, but I didn't. Sometimes authors should take a year or two off to think rather than write something fast to please their publishers. Kate Atkinson can certainly do better.
Disappointing July 11, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Whilst accepting some degree of cleverness in creating the plot it relyed to an ridiculous extent on coincidence. It was also full of meandering dreams and memories of the main characters which were boring and unrelated to the plot. The ending also dragged on and was totally unsatisfying.
 A Good Thing July 2, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
I have just finished this book after several attempts of starting it and the short verdict is - I liked it but I didn't love it. Hence four stars. The reason is that for me the benchmark of Kate Atkinson's writing was Emotionally Wierd which I loved because of it's very wierdness. This is more like Case Histories so if you liked that then you will very probably enjoy this.
The main characters are very vivid and although they aren't particularly lovely there are a few I found myself routing for. Martin, the wimpy writer, gets plagued by "Cosmic Justice", Louise, the tough police officer who loves her cat more than her mother and Jackson Brodie, ex-everything who gets the closest to solving the mystery. By far the best character is Gloria (the dodgy builder's wife) and the funniest moments are Gloria's deadpan opinions on anything from her horrible children to her cheating husband.
The story gets off to a pretty slow start. Once you get past the slightly tedious retelling of "the incident" from the point of view of the main characters it rolls through quite cleverly, linking up seeming unconnected people, places and events.
Be warned, by the end there are a lot of infuriating loose ends and unanswered questions - things we can only guess at. Mostly to do with Gloria and if I were to tell you why it would spoil the book, so I won't. But I finished reading the last page and I just thought "Huh? How and when did she do that?".
Other reviewers haven't liked the writing style but for me that was one of my favourite parts of this book. There were a fair few self mocking literary references. I'm not keen on this sort of thing but it made sense in the setting. But it's a difficult thing to get all those train-of-thought tangents packed in and still have a story you can make sense of. It was easy to read and for me that is "A Good Thing". I really can't be bothered with prose that makes you're brain hurt, or language you need a dictionary to understand.
Reading back through this reveiw I don't feel as though I've done justice to One Good Turn. I enjoyed it and would recommend it. In fact I will probably read it again.
 Had great fun reading it June 7, 2008
It starts incredibly fast... a driver in Edinburgh , an enigmatic man right from the beginning, someone whose name isn't what 's written on his identification papers, nearly dies when attacked by a brute driving a honda ,in a city collision... Ironically enough, he is saved by a writer whose laptop proves to be the perfect tool when he crashes it on the skull of the murderous wretch... The incident has been witnessed by many people... whose lives we are going to read about in the next 300 pages.
I found it frustrating at first not to find out more about the driving accident and the parts, those involved had to play.But then, reading more and more about all the witnesses I found myself caught in their life stories, always interesting, often comical, sometimes moving... And all those threads are cleverly woven until the finale reveals it all and you know who the injured driver was and why he was in Edinburgh in the first place. A very clever story, majestically told... an entertaining read that will keep you on tenterhooks.
 Awful characters saved by clever plot April 24, 2008
My feelings about this book are mixed. I almost gave up on it because despite being introduced to dozens of characters in the first 100 pages, I didn't care about a single one of them. Fortunately after that the plot began to take over and I thought the multi-layered 'Russian Doll' theme was very original and worked really well. So 5 stars for the plot and 1 star for the characters gives 3 stars over all.
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