To Kate Atkinson life is a long stream of coincidences. At my third encounter with this author (two Jackson Brodie's novel and the unsatisfying Life after life) I'm starting to see a common pattern in her plots, often consisting in a cascade of events on which her protagonists never seem able to get a grip until, inevitably, they found themselves connected to each other through the threads of a thin but very resistant web. 
 After reading Case Histories you may start to think that Cambridge, England, has 50 inhabitants top, that for some mysterious reasons ignore each other existence until Atkinson decides to focus on them. 
 Even more curiously, the author managed to choose a male protagonist, private investigator Jackson Brodie, for a book that almost exclusively deals with women. 
 You will find every kind of women in Case Histories: evil ex-wives, devoted daughters, shameless flirty spinsters and prude uptight spinsters, loving sisters and exhausted young mothers, old racist cat-ladies,unfaithful wives. At the beginning of the book, almost all of them have reached their current position in life by accident, dragged by circumstances, the expectations of a fundamentally misogynous society, abusive fathers, husbands, teachers, random neighbours. In particular, Atkinson's women often find themselves married "by chance"; it wasn't in their plans and they are never particularly happy about it but nonetheless at some point in their life they find themselves passively dragged into it. This view of marriage as an unwanted cage recurs in every Atkinson's novel, I don't know if a consequence of a negative personal experiences or a feminist stand "on principle" and I have to say I'm starting to find it wearisome. 
 As a sort of compensation the main male character seems wrapped in a "gruff holiness" ("you are the only good man on earth", one of the women tells him reproachfully at one point), a symbol of all the misunderstood men on the earth. 
 Nevertheless, he too can't escape his destiny and seems totally incapable of controlling the tiniest detail of his life. He is supposed to be a private investigator but more than actively looking for clues he just walks around while people and facts magically come to him. 
 I've learn by now that Atkinson's books are only nominally mysteries, they are actually novels about life but the lives she examines, although dramatically real, somehow of a fairy tale, a fairy tale full of ogres, bad wolves and improbable, charming, twists of fate. 
 It's not always easy to connect to her nonchalant narrative style that jumps from POV to POV and goes back and forth in time as it pleases and her tendency to digress from what initials appears to be the main plot is almost disconcerting, especially in the beginning. I personally needed some chapters to reacquaint myself to this so I would say that the pleasure in reading this book arrives slowly and almost surprises you and only when you've finished it you'll discover that you' re gonna miss it.