Big Sky a novel by Kate Atkinson

These novels are like boxes of chocolates for me - I consume them horribly quickly but I enjoy them so much!

Kate is still torturing Jackson Bodie (her fictional protagonist). Reasons Jackson (a private detective) has to be not at all cheerful:

• When he was a child his beloved older sister was murdered.
• When he was a child his older brother killed himself (hanging) and Jackson found the body.
• His parents were quite grim, one gathers. He had a spartan upbringing. (only two outfits, one his school uniform). Actually, he sounds contemporary with Alan Bennet and he is supposed to be younger. I don't know how old he's meant to be.
• He was in the army which one supposes was not all roses but where did he go? Northern Ireland? Kosovo? Iraq?
• He was in the police and no doubt dealt with horrible accidents and people not at their very best.
• His first wife left him and took their daughter, whom Jackson loves, to New Zealand. I think it was NZ. In Kate's books people are always hiving off to New Zealand as though it is a pleasant limbo she can park them in.
• His first wife was very critical of Jackson and it is hard to tell why.
• He met and loved a witty actress called Julia. She got pregnant with his baby and didn't tell him until the baby was a child, so he missed out on a lot of years with this boy. I have no idea why Julia is so rotten to Jackson and why he forgives her. 
• He was in a train crash and died, but was resuscitated.
• He suddenly got rich, but was briefly married to a woman who stole all his money and scarpered. He must be a really hopeless detective otherwise he'd have been wise to her.
• In one book he was beaten up and put into a dustbin.
• He loved a Scottish policewoman called Louise, but because Jackson operates quite obliquely to the law - he's more of a vigilante though he'd hate you for saying so - he felt they had no future, because he wouldn't have been able to tell her all the things he does. But he still thinks about her.
• Julia is endlessly sarcastic to Jackson and he has internalised her mocking voice, so he mocks himself all the time. Never has a moment to feel content or manly pride. 
• Jackson's son is fifteen, terribly boring and terribly bored. Jackson loves him.
• Just as Julia takes over control of Nathan the son, paying for his education, she also takes a large stake in the dog! Jackson isn't even top dog with the dog. 

So I worry about Jackson Brodie as a man who is honest, does manly things and loves his children and saves lives, but no-one appreciates him at all. Even when he saves a boy from drowning the boy is too gauche to say thanks. His main hope is to protect the people he loves, and his secondary hope is to protect complete strangers from disaster. He survives alone but he'd much rather be with Julia or Louise, so from that point of view he's incomplete - lonely.

You wonder, if men are so stoical and unappreciated, (and Jackson is not the only one in the book, there is also a character called Vince whose wife chucks him out, claiming the marital home) how long can we carry on with a society that isn't delivering fulfilment for so many of its people? These men are lost.

The plot is really good in this book, and there are plenty of interesting characters, and lots of amusement to be had from them. I also like the setting in the North East of England, by the coast there, although it's not an area I'm in any hurry to go back to but my mum loved it and went on many a coach trip from Harrogate.

The plot concerns sex trafficking and child abuse. There are a few survivors of child abuse in the book, and they are not unmarked by it, I am sure, but only one of them looks like a victim. The other two are resilient, which is not to say that they aren't damaged, but they are not defined by their histories. It reminded me that I saw an interview with Germaine Greer where she describes how she was raped back in the day in Australia, and she says, yes, it's bad, but it won't ruin your life unless you let it, you have to be resilient. I liked that.

As well as some creeps in the trafficking trade and some paedophiles, and the luckless Jackson and the luckless Vince... there is a male character who seems good, resourceful and sensitive. He is a schoolboy. I think the character of Harry is the light of hope in the very dark story. Meanwhile, his kid sister is kitted out in sugar pink and Disney outfits, and it makes you think, why have we dreamed up this ridiculous travesty of femininity? Is this a fetish? While the child's mother, in her kit, goes for the whole Love Island look, it's just a kind of disguise. Underneath, she is practising martial arts, clean eating and keeping her secrets.

At one point though, Kate Atkinson goes partisan for remain. It's quite near the end of the book where she sizes up a character and says I bet he/or she voted leave, and it's someone quite horrible, and I thought, ooooh, you're alienating some of your audience there probably. I mean, not everyone who reads K.A. voted remain, surely? You just can't tell who voted leave. What a terrible divisive sword it has been.

P.s. In last week's Times Saturday Magazine there was this rather idiotic American man who made a big fetish of his fitness and his "biohacks" - even injecting stem cells into his penis and trying to lift weights with his manly thing. But right at the end of the article, just as you were despairing of the sheer narcissism and waste of it all, he said that his fans are starting to ask him advice about life rather than fitness. They ask him "How do I pray?" How do I have meals with my family?" and "What is all this for?" And he wonders, maybe fitness is something you concentrate on to block the fact that your life has no meaning. I was stunned that he had mentioned this because it was not in his interests at all: but he just offered it up as a possibility. But yeah.

Jackson Brodie goes running, and he quite enjoys it. He puts his music in his ears and runs into the wind. There's not so much narcissism in that.