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| One Good Turn | 
 enlarge | Author: Kate Atkinson
Publisher: Black Swan
Category: Book
List Price: £7.99
Buy Used: £0.01
You Save: £7.98 (100%)
New (30) from £2.77
Avg. Customer Rating:  66 reviews
Sales Rank: 1733
Media: Paperback
Pages: 528
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.8
Dimensions (in): 7.7 x 5 x 1.4
ISBN: 0552772445
EAN: 9780552772440
ASIN: 0552772445
Publication Date: December 16, 2006
Availability: Usually dispatched within 1-2 business days
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| Customer Reviews: Read 61 more reviews...
 What a muddle! November 12, 2008
I was so infuriated by this novel that I had to get out of bed to write this at once, having just finished it. Fragmented, confusing plot; uninteresting two-dimensional characters; odd inconsequential flashbacks; a rushed and unsatisfactory ending; coincidence upon coincidence. What on earth was all the hype about? Have I missed something? I know Kate Atkinson is capable of so much better. What on earth was she thinking of? Altogether, a great disappointment.
 Brilliant, highly recommended November 5, 2008
1 out of 2 found this review helpful
I agree with another reviewer who has questioned how anyone could give this book just one star. I thought it was great, funny in parts, sad, mysterious, tragic with bucket loads of plot twists. I only wish I could write like Kate Atkinson. I could not put this book down.
 Bloody brilliant October 16, 2008
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
How could anyone not have just thoroughly enjoyed this??????
Every time a link was made between the characters I found myself smirking (sometimes snorting)and nodding with enjoyment (nice image?)....especially the final connection - I'd been asking what about Paul Brady all the way through...glad I got my answer.
The book also packs many poignant punches with the (insightful) character behaviours and thoughts. Great caricatures. Love em. So amusing because they are so believable and therefore almost predictable.
Have decided Kate Atkinson is my new imaginary friend. I'll sit her next to Tracey Emin.
 Emotionally thin October 5, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
What a disappointment after Kate Atkinson's Case Histories, where Jackson Brodie made his appearance. Case Histories had the thrill of the quest and the art of detection, played out by emotionally weird yet disturbingly real families and individuals. It was quite outside genre.
One Good Turn takes place in Iain Rankin land but really, are any of the characters even as believable as Rankin's "Big Mo" Rafferty? Brodie's character seems to be slipping into the background; the hero Martin Canning is not quite believable and not quite interesting either. Rankin, le Carre and Eric Ambler can do the innocent caught up in horrible events; Atkinson evidently can't, though like most reviewers I did read the book to the end, and quite fast too.
No coincidence, surely, that in the novel Canning is being hectored by a publisher's editor to churn out fast-selling, mediocre thrillers.
Finally, I can live without English authors "doing" Edinburgh with a surfeit of name dropping and nonsense (maybe in another of her books) about "presbyterian genes".
What Grows From One Incident September 16, 2008
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
A road rage incident is witnessed by a queue of people outside a lunchtime show at the Edinburgh Festival. The novel weaves together the seemingly disparate stories of some of the witnesses, all increasingly interlinking as the narrative unfolds.
The characters themselves at first, each in their seemingly disjointed and episodic narratives, all seem like typical thriller stereotypes. There is the wife of an unscrupulous and unfaithful property developer, a wimpish crime writer, a single-mother policewoman with a son on the verge of villainy, and Jackson Brodie: ex-army, ex-police, ex-private-eye and - at first - almost a walking cliche.
However, Atkinson, with deft touches of characterisation, breathes life and credibility into these various characters and weaves together the stories wittily and masterfully, akin to the set of nested Russian dolls that feature in the narrative. Atkinson creates a novel here that succeeds both as a thriller and as a study of character through emotional drama that would put many a so-called `literary novel' to shame.
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