48 pages • 1 hour read
Kate AtkinsonCase Histories: A Novel
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2004A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Background
Authorial Context: Kate Atkinson
Atkinson is an English writer primarily known for her award-winning novels. She is a three-time winner of the Costa Book Award (formerly known as the Whitbread Prize) for Behind the Scenes at the Museum (1995), Life After Life (2013), and A God in Ruins (2015). Atkinson was born in York, England, and studied literature at the University of Dundee. She went to graduate school but failed her qualifying exams, or viva, and had a series of odd jobs before she began to make a living as a writer.
Atkinson’s most popular works are her Jackson Brodie mysteries, of which Case Histories is the first. Critics praised this series for its literary prose and insight into characters, which favorably differentiates it from the typically plot-driven mystery genre. Robin Vidimos wrote in a review for the Denver Post that “Atkinson draws her characters to some depth, and in revealing their flaws and motivations achieves a richer, more satisfying result” than a typical crime novel (Vidimos, Robin. “Absurd Looms Large in Mystery.” The Denver Post, 2006). However, Atkinson herself has resisted the idea that she writes novels in a particular genre. In an interview for Publisher’s Weekly, she said, “I know people talk about Case Histories being ‘a literary crime novel,’ but I think of it as a novel that contains several crimes and mysteries. There is always a mystery to be solved at the heart of everything I write” (429). This blending of genres is apparent not just in the Brodie series, but in her historical fiction duology which begins with Life After Life.
Genre Context: Detective Novels
Case Histories is considered a detective novel and follows some of the typical tropes of this genre: the jaded detective, the beautiful woman who needs help, and the overlooked clue. The golden age of detective fiction in the 1920s and 1930s codified many rules of the genre. In 1928, S. S. Van Dine wrote a list of 20 rules that all detective fiction must follow, claiming that the genre was not just an “intellectual game” but a “sporting event.” The rules included ideas that are still followed in contemporary detective and mystery novels: “The reader must have equal opportunity with the detective for solving the mystery. All clues must be plainly stated and described” (“Twenty Rules for Writing Detective Stories.” Clarion, 2022). It also included rules that many contemporary writers take pleasure in breaking, such as that “the detective himself, or one of the official investigators, should never turn out to be the culprit,” and “[t]here must be no love interest” (“Twenty Rules”). Many writers, including Agatha Christie and Gillian Flynn, use an unreliable narrator—a untrustworthy or deceptive storyteller—so much so that it is often a hallmark of current thrillers and crime novels.
Van Dine’s idea that mysteries are a game or sport also explains why he insists that literary value or psychology don’t belong in the genre. He claims: “A detective novel should contain no long descriptive passages, no literary dallying with side-issues, no subtly worked-out character analyses, no ‘atmospheric’ preoccupations” (“Twenty Rules”). To him, these books are more like a crossword puzzle than a realistic exploration of the human psyche. However, authors like Atkinson ignore this rule and instead use the genre as a way of exploring societal issues such as misogyny, abuse, and violence. In Case Histories, as Jackson Brodie and the other characters grapple with the existence of evil, Atkinson also explores the resilience of the human mind and the possibility of hope. She sees possibilities in the detective genre that early critics like Van Dine never dreamed of.
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