Started Early, Took My Dog by Kate Atkinson: A review

One of the great pleasures - one of many - for me in reading Kate Atkinson is all the cultural and literary references in her books. It's sort of an "inside baseball" thing, I guess. The cognoscente feel especially smart and privileged to understand the references.

Many of her references relate to television series that any fan of PBS/BBC mysteries will recognize. For example, I think every one of her books that I have read so far has had someone in them watching Midsomer Murders! As a prodigious fan of that series and owner of an (almost) complete collection of DVDs of it, I know just who she's talking about when she refers to those people.

Another television investigative team she mentions in this book is that of Inspector Morse and Sergeant Lewis, another of my all-time favorites. There are also literary references to everyone from Shakespeare to Faulkner to, in this case, Emily Dickinson. It's from one of Dickinson's poems that the rather weird title of this book is derived.

But enough about cultural references. What about the story itself?

The story is typical Atkinson. It has its roots in an event that happened in the 1970s. A prostitute is murdered and her child(ren?) disappear(s). One of those who finds the body is WPC Tracy Waterhouse. She picks up the child in the apartment where the murder took place, a little boy of four, and cuddles him to comfort him. Then a social worker comes and takes him away and shortly after he is made to disappear, apparently sent to an orphanage under a new name. More than thirty years later, Tracy Waterhouse continues to be haunted by this.

By now, Waterhouse has retired from the police force and is working as head of security at a place called Merrion Centre in Leeds. One day she witnesses a woman being abusive to a small girl, presumably her daughter, in the Centre. Tracy follows the woman, whom she knows is a prostitute from her years with the police, and impulsively offers to buy the small child from her! Tracy Waterhouse's lonely, humdrum life will never be the same.

Also witnessing the abusive event is an elderly woman named Tilly, an actress on a soap opera. Tilly wants to interfere to protect the child but is stopped by her physical frailty and incipient dementia.

In another part of Merrion Centre that day, Jackson Brodie witnesses a hulk of a man with a little dog, a Border terrier. The man has a rope tied too tightly around the little dog's neck and is dragging him along. Jackson follows the man and when he gets to a somewhat more private area, he hails the man, says "On guard!" and punches him hard in the stomach. The man goes down and Jackson takes the dog and walks away.

How the stories of all three of these characters intertwine and how they are all a part of the continuing story that began with the murder of a prostitute back in 1975 is the complicated tale that Atkinson enthralls us with in Started Early, Took My Dog. We learn again, as Faulkner told us, that the past is never history; it is not even past.

Moreover, this book, as all those of Atkinson's that I've read, is full of her sly humor - some of it chuckle-worthy, some of it laugh-out-loud funny. But overall and binding it all together is a sense of morality and intelligence. Jackson Brodie may be a flawed character, as is Tracy Waterhouse and certainly poor Tilly, but all are ethical beings who are driven (and perhaps doomed) by their impulse to protect the weak. Perhaps it is significant that both Tracy and Jackson are former police officers and that Tilly still mourns the death of her black child that she failed to protect.

This was the fourth in the Jackson Brodie saga. Kate Atkinson has now gone on to write other things and it is not clear if she will come back to Brodie. I sincerely hope she does. There is, I think, a lot more development possible here and I'm just not finished reading about him. I would hate to think that my last glimpse of him would be looking at his ringing cell phone and thinking of Emily Dickinson's Hope is the Thing With Feathers.

Poetry Sunday: Don't Hesitate by Mary Oliver

How about we share another Mary Oliver poem? After all, you can never have too many of those. In this one, the poet seems to acknowledge that it is often hard to simply live in and enjoy the moment, perhaps because we are afraid it can't last. She urges us to give in to that moment and fully experience the joy. Although "much can never be redeemed, still, life has some possibility left." Don't Hesitate by Mary Oliver If you suddenly and unexpectedly feel joy, don’t hesitate. Give in to it. There are plenty of lives and whole towns destroyed or about to be. We are not wise, and not very often kind. And much can never be redeemed. Still, life has some possibility left. Perhaps this is its way of fighting back, that sometimes something happens better than all the riches or power in the world. It could be anything, but very likely you notice it in the instant when love begins. Anyway, that’s often the case. Anyway, whatever it is, don’t be afraid of its plenty. Joy is no...

Poetry Sunday: Blackberry-Picking by Seamus Heaney

My mother was a farm wife and a prodigious canner. She canned fruit and vegetables from the garden, even occasionally meat. But the best thing that she canned, in my opinion, was blackberry jam. Even as I type those words my mouth waters! Of course, before she could make that jam, somebody had to pick the blackberries. And that somebody was quite often named Dorothy. I think Seamus Heaney might have spent some time among the briars plucking those delicious black fruits as well, so he would have known that "Once off the bush the fruit fermented, the sweet flesh would turn sour." They don't keep; you have to get that jam made in a hurry! Blackberry-Picking by Seamus Heaney Late August, given heavy rain and sun For a full week, the blackberries would ripen. At first, just one, a glossy purple clot Among others, red, green, hard as a knot. You ate that first one and its flesh was sweet Like thickened wine: summer's blood was in it Leaving stains upon the tongue and lust ...

Poetry Sunday: Hymn for the Hurting by Amanda Gorman

You probably remember poet Amanda Gorman from her appearance at the inauguration of President Biden. She read her poem "The Hill We Climb" on that occasion. After the senseless slaughter in Uvalde this week, she was inspired to write another poem which was published in The New York Times. It seemed perfect for the occasion and so I stole it in order to feature it here, just in case you didn't get a chance to read it in the Times . Hymn for the Hurting by Amanda Gorman Everything hurts, Our hearts shadowed and strange, Minds made muddied and mute. We carry tragedy, terrifying and true. And yet none of it is new; We knew it as home, As horror, As heritage. Even our children Cannot be children, Cannot be. Everything hurts. It’s a hard time to be alive, And even harder to stay that way. We’re burdened to live out these days, While at the same time, blessed to outlive them. This alarm is how we know We must be altered — That we must differ or die, That we must triumph or try. ...

The Nature of Things

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