In my mind -- until a better theory comes along -- I tend to classify the novels I read into two groups. In one, the plot is fairly straightforward, and the narrative's momentum becomes captivating because of the plot's inherent strengths. In the other, the author keeps the reader in suspense about what's happening -- via a series of seemingly unconnected plotlines, through a narrator who may be unreliable or withholding, through a general sense of ambiguity. The analogy I'll make here is to a juggling act: the author keeps a number of objects in the air -- often thrillingly -- but the real skill lies in collecting all these objects safely.
Samantha Hunt's The Seas falls into the "unreliable narrator" camp. Actually, that's not entirely accurate -- although it's clear from the prologue that the book's narrator perceives the world differently than most, half the pleasure of the novel is coming to understand the underlying logic behind her perceptions. It's a finely spun story, concerning the 19-year-old narrator's relationships with her mother; her father, who may or may not have died years before; and the man, much older and traumatized by his wartime experiences, with whom she's in love. Set in a seaside town in (I think) northern Maine, Hunt manages to evoke a sense of place well while remaining ambiguous. Given that the novel includes elements drawn from folklore, this ambiguity works in the context of the novel; Hunt never makes it clear whether the narrator's perception that something supernatural is taking place is real or not. Which, I daresay, works for me -- it's one thing to play with that
is this magic realism or isn't it? tension, but the resolution of that question can cause a novel to fall apart. (Helen Oyeyemi's
The Icarus Girl fell victim to this issue, in my opinion). Hunt manages to sustain her tone throughout, and that ultimately makes
The Seas memorable.
Kate Atkinson's Case Histories comes from a slightly different camp. In it, the narration is straightforward, covering several disparate characters: an ex-cop turned private detective, a traumatized lawyer, a prudish continuing-education instructor, among others. Atkinson effortlessly creates fleshed-out, sympathetic characters, and her sense of place is terrific. And the setup of
Case Histories -- a detective takes on three seemingly disconnected cases, which turn out to be more interwoven than he would have thought -- is impressive. Unfortunately -- for me, at least -- it's in the interweaving of the cases that the novel falls short. There are clearly connections: someone from one case becomes close to someone from a third, and by the end of the book, it becomes clear that Jackson, the novel's detective hero, has secrets of his own that make him uniquely sympathetic to the concerns of his clients. But there's no real "Gotcha!" moment where all of the cases converge on one point -- one of them remains, as far as I can tell, quite detached from the rest of the novel's action. And while I can recommend
Case Histories on the basis of Atkinson's skills with location and character, the plotting of it wasn't what I had expected.
On the other hand, it might be that I'm looking in the wrong places with this novel. I have a strange and somewhat crackpot theory that Atkinson may be going for something else altogether with this novel -- namely, the fact that many of the characters are fairly staunch atheists. Is Atkinson's point here that the interconnectedness of events implies a higher order of things; a refutation of these characters' refutations? If so, than this is a very different beast than the "literary detective" tag might imply...
