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A review by nicovreeland
One Good Turn by Kate Atkinson
2.0
DNF at 60%. The writing is kind of like pleasant small. It’s not bad exactly, but it’s not terribly compelling. It’s not really a mystery or even a suspense novel. It’s a coincidence novel, following the different people brought together by a car accident. I’m not much of one for coincidence in mysteries, it’s just too easy for an author to create them.
The pacing is also quite slow. We get a lot of people’s perspectives, and we don’t need all of them. For instance, there’s a murder, which we see, and then there’s a 13-minute chapter from the POV of the maid as she discovers the body. But of course she doesn’t just discover the body, she expounds about her life and her daily routine and her clients and on and on. It’s pleasant writing, but not good enough to make up for the fact that the whole chapter is a stall, drawing out the inevitable.
I tried to push through because other reviews said it picked up when the pieces started coming together, but holy hell, I made it 60% of the way through and very few pieces had come together. The ones that had were outweighed by all the dry British pontificating on aubergines and who brought what dish to last Christmas.
The pacing is also quite slow. We get a lot of people’s perspectives, and we don’t need all of them. For instance, there’s a murder, which we see, and then there’s a 13-minute chapter from the POV of the maid as she discovers the body. But of course she doesn’t just discover the body, she expounds about her life and her daily routine and her clients and on and on. It’s pleasant writing, but not good enough to make up for the fact that the whole chapter is a stall, drawing out the inevitable.
I tried to push through because other reviews said it picked up when the pieces started coming together, but holy hell, I made it 60% of the way through and very few pieces had come together. The ones that had were outweighed by all the dry British pontificating on aubergines and who brought what dish to last Christmas.