WRITER

Kate Atkinson

1951 - Today

Kate Atkinson

Kate Atkinson (born 20 December 1951) is an English writer of novels, plays and short stories. She is known for creating the Jackson Brodie series of detective novels, which has been adapted into the BBC One series Case Histories. Read more on Wikipedia

Since 2007, the English Wikipedia page of Kate Atkinson has received more than 766,951 page views. Her biography is available in 24 different languages on Wikipedia (up from 22 in 2019). Kate Atkinson is the 5,445th most popular writer (down from 4,845th in 2019), the 4,137th most popular biography from United Kingdom (down from 3,716th in 2019) and the 465th most popular British Writer.

Memorability Metrics

770k
Page Views (PV)
46.15
Historical Popularity Index (HPI)
24
Languages Editions (L)
2.82
Effective Languages (L*)
3.71
Coefficient of Variation (CV)

Notable Works

Case Histories

Mystery, Private investigators, Domestic fiction

"Case One: Olivia Land, youngest and most beloved of the Land girls, goes missing in the night and is never seen again. More than thirty years later, two of her surviving sisters, each achingly lonely in her own way, reunite when their cruel and distant father dies. There, among the clutter of their childhood home, they unearth a shocking clue to Olivia's disappearance." "Case Two: All of Theo's happiness is tied to his devoted daughter Laura. He delights in her wit, her effortless beauty, and selfless love, and in the fact that she's taken a position at his prestigious law firm. But on her first day on the job, a maniac storms into the office and turns Theo's world upside down." "Case Three: Michelle looks around one day and finds herself trapped in a hell of her own making. A very needy baby and a very demanding husband make her every waking moment a reminder that somewhere, somehow, shed made a grave mistake and would spend the rest of her life paying for it - until a fit of rage creates a grisly, bloody escape." "As Private Detective Jackson Brodie investigates all three cases, startling connections and discoveries emerge. Jackson finds himself inextricably caught up in his clients' lives; their grief, their job, their desire, and their unshakable need for resolution are very much like his own."--BOOK JACKET

2004

Emotionally Weird

Literature, Fiction, Mothers and daughters

On a peat and heather island off the west coast of Scotland, Effie and her mother Nora take refuge in the large mouldering house of their ancestors and tell each other stories. Nora, at first, recounts nothing that Effie really wants to hear, like who her father was - variously Jimmy, Jack, or Ernie. Effie tells of her life at college in Dundee, the land of cakes and William Wallace, where she lives in a lethargic relationship with Bob, a student who never goes to lectures, seldom gets out of bed, and to whom the Klingons are as real as the French and the Germans (more real than the Luxemburgers). But strange things are happening. Why is Effie being followed? Is someone killing the old people? And where is the mysterious yellow dog?

2000

One Good Turn

Mystery, Novelists, Policewomen

Awards BCA Crime Thriller of the Year Best Novel (nominee) It is summer, it is the Edinburgh Festival. People queuing for a lunchtime show witness a road-rage incident - an incident which changes the lives of everyone involved. Jackson Brodie, ex-army, ex-police, ex-private detective, is also an innocent bystander - until he becomes a suspect. With "Case Histories", Kate Atkinson showed how brilliantly she could explore the crime genre and make it her own. In "One Good Turn", she takes her masterful plotting one step further. Like a set of Russian dolls, each thread of the narrative reveals itself to be related to the last. Her Dickensian cast of characters are all looking for love or money and find it in surprising places. As ever with Atkinson what each one actually discovers is their true self. Unputdownable and triumphant, "One Good Turn" is a sharply intelligent read that is also percipient, funny, and totally satisfying.

2006

Behind the scenes at the museum

Fiction, Women, Family

The story of Ruby's own life is told in thirteen chapters, all written in the first person, documenting key periods in Ruby's life from 1951 to 1992. In between each chapter are (non-consecutive) flashbacks that tell the story from the point of view of one of the other (mostly female) members of Ruby's family—including her great-grandmother Alice, her grandmother Nell and her mother Bunty.

1996

Not the End of the World

Fiction, Short Stories, American Short stories

Arthur is a precocious eight-year-old boy whose mother is a B-list celebrity more concerned with the state of her bank account than with her son's development. Then an enigmatic young nanny named Missy introduces him to a world he never knew existed.

2002

Human croquet

Country life, Fiction

Once it had been the great forest of Lythe - a vast and impenetrable thicket of green with a mystery in the very heart of the trees. And here, in the beginning, lived the Fairfaxes, grandly, at Fairfax Manor, visited once by the great Gloriana herself. But over the centuries the forest has been destroyed, replaced by Streets of Trees. The Fairfaxes have dwindled too; now they live in 'Arden' at the end of Hawthorne Close and are hardly a family at all. But Isobel Fairfax, who drops into pockets of time and out again, knows about the past. She is sixteen and waiting for the return of her mother - the thin, dangerous Eliza with her scent of nicotine, ArpSge and sex, whose disappearance is part of the mystery that still remains at the heart of the forest.

1997

Page views of Kate Atkinsons by language

Over the past year Kate Atkinson has had the most page views in the Russian wikipedia edition with 8,519 views, followed by French (6,102), and German (4,510). In terms of yearly growth of page views the top 3 wikpedia editions are Danish (267.35%), Japanese (147.15%), and Dutch (101.60%)