I Feel the Need to Prove Myself

Kate Atkinson has a quirky new idea for a side project. Once she’s done with the second world war and her weary private detective, Jackson Brodie, she’ll spin off creative projects that up until now have only existed as parts of her characters’ lives. Madame Astarti, the fortune teller from her third novel, Emotionally Weird, might become the central figure in a new mystery series. Atkinson also envisions scripts for Green Acres, the rural soap opera from her short stories collections. She dreams of crafting episodes of a police procedural show featuring Collier and delving into the melodramatic murder mystery from her new Jackson Brodie novel, Death at the Sign of the Rook.

Writing these vibrant scenes with aristocrats, actors, Russian countesses, clergymen, and a meticulous little Swiss detective was a pure joy for Atkinson during the lockdown period. “I would have done so much more of that,” she confides while we sit sipping coffee in a quaint hotel in Edinburgh, “but I thought, I can see that I would just annoy people. I had to keep returning to Jackson.”

And so she did. Atkinson expertly wove a complex tale of deceit and delusion featuring Brodie and his reluctant partner, the ambitious policewoman Reggie Chase. They seek a stolen artwork and a home aide with a knack for disguise. Among the memorable characters are a reverend suddenly struck mute, a former army major who lost a leg in Afghanistan, and the eccentric Lady Milton managing in her decaying Yorkshire mansion. Lady Milton is Atkinson’s favorite, a character she’s been thinking about for 25 years.

It’s been nearly that long since Brodie first appeared in Case Histories 20 years ago. This is his sixth appearance, and over the years, Jason Isaacs brought him to life on the BBC, his brooding inner monologues and affinity for danger garnering Atkinson a devoted readership. For these readers, Atkinson prefers small bookshop events. “If you go to out-of-the-way places, they might not have a huge room, but they’ll have a great turnout. And they’ll be really happy to see you. I’ve had people wading through snow in wellingtons, and they make you cakes, they’re happy.” She pauses. “I really like going to Oswestry. I think it’s Oswestry that has a funicular railway.”

Death at the Sign of the Rook is a homage to the golden age of detective fiction. Atkinson’s teenage years were spent reading Agatha Christie, and she still enjoys re-reading her works. Like all the Jackson Brodie books, her latest casts a sharp eye on contemporary society and its discontents. When Reggie encounters CCTV in a funeral home mortuary, she grimly thinks of Jimmy Savile. Brodie ponders the logistics of rescuing a domestic violence victim. These are clever entertainments with serious undertones.

This has been Atkinson’s approach since her debut Behind the Scenes at the Museum in 1995, which tells the tale of Ruby Lennox, a working-class girl born in York, the same year as Atkinson. It won the Whitbread Book of the Year, triumphing over Salman Rushdie and Roy Jenkins. Recalling the media’s “Chambermaid beats Rushdie” reaction (she had once worked in a hotel), Atkinson humorously grimaces. Some journalists were “snobby and sniffy, just unsupportive.”

My father was a reader, but my mother never got it. When I got my MBE, she said: Why you?

Atkinson was surprised by the assumption that Ruby’s story was autobiographical, especially its class aspects. “I didn’t know we were a working-class family. Although, obviously, my grandparents were, but my parents were shopkeepers. That’s a different class of people, completely different.”

Her father, who had dementia, died the day before she won the Whitbread. How would he have reacted? “He would have been hugely proud. He was a reader, and he would have been very proud because he did come from a really poor background.” He sent Atkinson to a private primary school, more of a crammer for the 11-plus. Her father “knew that education was the key to getting out. I got the education he never did.”

Her mother, however, “never got it. When I got my MBE, she said, ‘Why you?’” Atkinson’s mother would have preferred her daughter to choose a more conventional life rather than pursuing a Ph.D. and having a varied career until publishing her first novel in her 40s. “I was illegitimate,” Atkinson discovered at 36. Her mother provided a memorable response: “I was going to tell you [once] but then you left the room.”

Behind the Scenes at the Museum expands from Ruby’s life into a spiral of family vignettes, including an early indication of Atkinson’s fascination with the second world war. This theme culminated magnificently in her Life After Life in 2013, followed by A God in Ruins, both books winning Costa awards, and Transcription in 2018.

Atkinson often says she considers A God in Ruins, following Ursula Todd’s brother Teddy, a wartime airman, her crowning achievement. “When I finished writing that book I just thought, ‘OK, I’ve written my best book and I’ve written the book I wanted to write.’”

That’s the trick in a way: just keep on writing books until finally people kind of go, ‘Oh, yeah, OK. She’s a writer.’

The Halifax bomber crews were a constant reality of death, leaving an indelible mark on Atkinson, who grew up with the remnants of wartime aerodromes. She’s also fascinated by post-war Britain, currently working on a novel set during the Festival of Britain in 1951. Her research uncovered rural life demonstrations that signified a way of life on the brink of disappearing.

Now 72, and having spent many years in Scotland, Atkinson firmly identifies herself as from Yorkshire rather than England or Scotland. “I’m not English. I’m from Yorkshire. It’s different.”

Uncomfortable with being defined or pigeonholed by geography, class, or genre, Atkinson has always kept writing books to prove herself. She feels her work has been underestimated, “I think the books have been underestimated in some ways because I’ve been trying to do quite interesting things with them. And I think that sometimes that is missed.”

For now, she’s content to send Brodie out into the world again while she gets back to her desk, wrestling with intricate plots. “You can’t just write in isolation. You do write in isolation – it’s a really complex thing. I am my reader, I’m the only reader. But I wouldn’t read in the same way other people do. I sometimes wonder, would I even like my books?”

• Death at the Sign of the Rook by Kate Atkinson is published by Doubleday.

Source: The Guardian