Remember your first encounters with a car GPS? It was a bit disconcerting having some stranger telling you which way to go, when to turn, etc., especially if you were on familiar ground. Turn left? But won’t that take me into a lake? (Every other street in central Orlando leads to a lake.) Ok, I’ll go that way, but I don’t think — oh, a shortcut. Who knew?
In Kate Atkinson’s terrific — and terrifically intricate — new novel, Started Early, Took My Dog, reluctant private detective Jackson Brodie sets his GPS for his boyhood home in North Yorkshire. “The voice on Jackson’s SatNav was ‘Jane,’ with whom he had been in a contentious relationship for a long time now.”
No surprise there. Over the course of three previous books, Jackson’s women invariably inspire, disappoint and confuse him. Now he’s ostensibly looking for his second wife Tessa, who disappeared with his money, but he’s really “looking for a peg to hang his hat on, an old dog looking for a new kennel, one untainted by the past. A fresh start. Somewhere there was a place for him. All he had to do was find it.”
Meanwhile, he’ll see if he can find an Australian woman’s British birth parents. This new quest will eventually intersect with other stories playing out both in the past and present. In one, Tracy Waterhouse, a retired cop working mall security, impulsively buys a little girl from her abusive mother and prepares to reinvent her life. This is the same Tracy, who in the book’s beginning scene in 1975, is a rookie who discovers a toddler in horrific circumstances. Then there’s Tilly, the aging actress who has a bit part in a TV detective show and whose wig and memory keep slipping. Jackson’s former lover Julia appears in the same popular series, which Jackson despises for its its “neat sanitized narrative.”
Atkinson’s narrative is hardly that. By all appearances, it’s a hot mess, lots of jumping around in totally different directions. But wait. Trust Atkinson’s GPS. She knows exactly where the book is going as she turns left, right, left again, doubles back, then straight on to the roundabout as the characters try to save others and themselves.
Jackson comes into possession of a winsome border terrier after punching out its cruel owner. Tracy, determined to protect young Courtney, confides in her former partner, who is grieving his own great losses. A gray car with a pink furry rabbit drooping from its rearview mirror shadows Tracy, then Jackson. Linda the social worker keeps missing appointments. Hope McMasters texts Jackson from Australia: Any luck finding her parents?
Luck, coincidence, fate. Emily Dickinson’s poetry. The old refrain, “for want of a nail.” These are among the coordinates Atkinson maps with such acuity.
She has used this same narrative technique to good effect in the previous Jackson Brodie books, but she’s brilliant in Started Early, Took My Dog. Tricky plot. Memorable characters. Perfect ending. For fans, she’s certainly answered the title of her last novel, When Will There Be Good News?
Open Book: I bought my hardcover copy of Started Early, Took My Dog (Little, Brown) when it was first published a couple weeks ago and read it immediately. Then I read it again.
On a Clear Day I Can Read Forever 
I’ve read Case Histories, and while slightly convoluted, I loved it. Reading more of her is on my to do list. BTW, I thought I might see you at Reading Between the Wines! Maybe at the UCF Festival? I’ll be there too, somewhere, doing bloggy things.