Case Histories
Critique • Quotes
First edition, 2004About the book
Author
Kate Atkinson, England
First publication
1896, serialized in McClure's magazine
First book publication
2004 in England
Form
Novel
Genre
Crime, mystery, detective
Writing language
English
Length
Approx. 108,000 words
Notable lines
How lucky were they? A heat wave in the middle of the school holidays, exactly where it belonged.
— First lines
Novels gave you a completely false idea about life, they told lies and they implied there were endings when in reality there were no endings, everything just went on and on and on.
She'd had a glimpse of a possible future—the pretty cottage, the garden full of flowers and vegetables, bread in the oven, a bowl of strawberries on the table, the happy baby hitched on her hip while she threw corn to the chickens. It would be like a Hardy novel before it all goes wrong.
He was at that dangerous age when men suddenly notice that they're going to die eventually, inevitably, and there isn't a damn thing they can do about it, but that doesn't stop them trying, whether it's shagging anything that moves or listenig to early Bruce Springsteen and buying a top-of-the-range motorbike (a BMW K 1200 LT usually, thus considerably upping their chances of meeting death even earlier than anticipated).
Parenting is like writing, most people just make it up as they go along.
"The plot thickens," he said, and wished he hadn't said that because it sounded like something from a bad detective novel. "I think we have a suspect." That didn't sound much better. "My house has just exploded, by the way." At least that was novel."
"C'est la vie, Mr Brodie, c'est la vie."
— Last lines
Critique • Quotes
