Kate Atkinson's novel When Will There Be Good News? has one of the most brutal and frightening beginnings that I've read. A mother and her three small children are picnicking in the country when a man attacks with a carving knife. Six-year-old Joanna escapes into a tall wheat field, but she is the only survivor.
Thirty years later Joanna, a successful doctor and the mother of a little boy, is told her family's killer is being released from prison. A few days later Joanna and her son disappear. This is one of many gripping plot lines, including a train crash and a case of missing identity. But Atkinson's real subject is loss. Is it truly possible to get over losing someone you love? Will a person give in to their loss, or will they struggle to move forward?
Before reading When Will There Be Good News? you might want to reread its title. Amid murders and train wrecks you could ask yourself the same question. But Atkinson focuses on survivors and the good they create in their lives rather than the evil created by her villains. It's a literary page-turner and a book whose survivors are as interesting as the events that surround them.
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