Case Histories: A Novel

“He lit a new cigarette from the stub of the old one because he had run out of matches, and faced with a choice between chain-smoking or abstinence, he’d taken the former option because it felt like there was enough abstinence in his life already.”

This introduction to Jackson shows him chain smoking in his car because he feels that “there was enough abstinence in his life already.” This passage reveals Jackson’s dark sense of humor as well as his self-destructive tendencies. He sees a choice between deprivation and excess and chooses excess.

“(Were they really going to cremate him tomorrow, burn him into ashes? How extraordinary that you could be given the license to do that to another human being. Just get rid of them, as if they were rubbish.)”

Though the novel does not reveal that Victor sexually abused his daughters until later, there are many early clues to his true nature. One is Amelia’s thrill that they will be able to “burn him into ashes” as if he were “rubbish.” Her diction here indicates that she is not close to her father and is glad to be rid of him, highlighting The Lingering Effects of Trauma.

“When he first glimpsed inside the courts of the colleges it had been like seeing visions of paradise. He hadn’t known anything so beautiful existed, yet now he hadn’t even looked at a college for ten years. He walked past the gorgeous frontages of Queens’ and Corpus Christi and Clare and King’s and saw nothing but stone and mortar and, eventually, dust.”

In this passage, Theo reflects on his initial perspective of Cambridge as a storied and gorgeous university town. After Laura’s death, he is unable to appreciate the beauty around him. Instead, he sees the whole town as something that will eventually decay and become “dust,” just as Laura has. This highlights The Lingering Effects of Trauma.

“She lived in a small flat, one bedroom, walls painted white, scented candles, everything kept simple (very like a secular anchorite in fact) and socialized minimally with the other staff.”

After prison, Caroline initially attempts to lead an austere and penitent life, seeing herself as “a secular anchorite.” Anchorites were nuns who lived in solitary contemplation and Caroline sees her profession as a way of leading this kind of life in a secular way. Her white walls and “simple” decor are part of this process.

“The Kerry-Annes and the Olivias and the Lauras, all of them precious, all of them lost forever. All of them holy girls. Sacrifices to some unknown, evil deity. Please God, never Marlee.”

Throughout the novel, Jackson thinks of the missing girls as “holy girls” who are sanctified through their deaths. He wants to rescue or avenge these girls, and his desire relates to the theme of The Quest for Justice and Closure. However, he also realizes that this quest is often futile as many of them will never be found. To Jackson, thinking of the dead girls as “holy” is one way of memorializing their deaths and attempting to make sense of them.

“Theo had a body; Amelia and Julia needed one. Olivia was a different kind of space than Laura, an incorporeal mystery, a question without an answer. A puzzle that could tease you until you went mad.”

Jackson reflects on the two horrible scenarios that his clients are facing, both of which highlight The Lingering Effects of Trauma: Theo is certain that his loved one is dead, while Amelia and Julia are still uncertain about Olivia’s fate. Jackson believes they both situations are terrible but understands that the “incorporeal mystery” of a mysterious disappearance could cause someone to fracture from the sheer weight of not knowing what happened. For this reason, Amelia and Julia’s situation is even worse than Theo’s.

“No one in Edith Wharton’s world really wanted to be there but Amelia would have got along fine inside an Edith Wharton novel. In fact, she could have happily lived inside any nineteenth-century novel.”

Famed 19th-century novelist Edith Wharton wrote books that detailed the suffocating rules of high society in the Gilded Age. Amelia fantasizes about living in one of those novels because she believes she is a naturally straitlaced person who would thrive in a rule-bound society. She imagines that she would be happier there than she is in the contemporary world. 

“If only Amelia could go back, take Olivia’s place that night, fight off whatever evil it was that had taken her. If only Amelia could have been chosen instead.”

Amelia struggles with feeling unwanted and unlucky, highlighting The Lingering Effects of Trauma. She reflects on the beloved Olivia and wishes that she could be the hero to save her, or even the one who is taken. Notably, she imagines Olivia being “chosen” even though something terrible happened to her. Amelia is so desperate for love and attention that she even fantasizes about being kidnapped if it would mean that someone wants her.

“How many girls were out there, unturned by the plow, unseen by the passerby? If only you could lock girls away, in towers, in dungeons, in convents, in their bedrooms, anywhere that would keep them safe.”

Theo constantly reflects on Laura’s murder and what he sees as his failure to keep her safe. In this passage, he creates a litany of “safe” places for women that evoke legends and fairy tales: towers, dungeons, convents. The fairy-tale quality underscores that this is not a realistic expectation and that no parent can protect their child by hiding them away.

“‘You’re going to work after your wedding then?’ Rowena had said to her in the airless atmosphere of their wedding marquee, and Caroline replied, ‘Yes,’ and didn’t feel a need to elaborate. The collar of Rowena’s cream raw-silk suit had been defiled by a smear of burnt-orange lily pollen that Caroline hoped Rowena’s dry cleaners would have great difficulty in removing.”

The hostility between Caroline and Rowena is obvious in this passage. Caroline finds her wedding reception “airless,” which implies that the marriage will suffocate her. She sees the pollen on Rowena’s suit as something that has “defiled” it and hopes that it ruins her mother-in-law’s outfit. Though everything is beautiful and genteel on the surface, it seethes with menace underneath.

“It was teatime in Binky’s garden. Everything was so wildly overgrown that a machete would have been a more fitting accompaniment at the tea table instead of the extensive array of tarnished butter knives and jam spoons that formed part of Binky’s complex tea ceremony.”

Jackson humorously describes his tea with Binky and her nephew. He imagines her “wildly overgrown” garden as a jungle that needs clearing with a “machete.” This weapon is also an allusion to England’s colonial past which Jackson is appalled by, but Binky is proud of. Binky is obsessed with meaningless details and ceremony while her garden reflects her status as a lonely old woman with no one to care for her.

“Her bones rested in the City Cemetery on Newmarket Road, but the whole of Cambridge acted as a reliquary for her memory.”

Theo compares the city to a “reliquary,” or shrine, where sacred objects are kept. He thinks of Laura as a saint whom the whole of the city commemorates. This reveals Theo’s love and grief as well as his inability to move forward with his life after Laura’s death, highlighting The Lingering Effects of Trauma—every part of the city reminds him of Laura’s death.

“He was surprised by an unexpected surge of affection for the cat. Of course, it probably wasn’t Mrs. Chippy. The cat would probably have responded to anything, but the coincidence seemed too much for Jackson in his exhausted state. He turned to go back into the house. And the house exploded. Just like that.”

Jackson’s common sense tells him that seeing a cat is just coincidence, but his hope that it might be Binky’s cat, Mrs. Chippy, winds up saving his life. Humorously, this connects to an earlier moment in the novel when a woman tells Jackson that black cats are lucky for him, and he dismisses this advice as nonsense. Though the book is not overtly supernatural, the coincidence of the black cat reinforces the idea that following a hunch can be helpful.

“Amelia had a sudden, unexpected memory of swimming in the river, her sun-warmed body moving smoothly through the cool, lucent water. She felt a sudden physical craving, like hunger. Why was she trapped in her clumsy, baggy body? Why couldn’t she have the body of her childhood back? Why couldn’t she have her childhood back?”

Much of Amelia’s trauma is wrapped up in her experience of her body as undesirable—she thinks of it as “clumsy, baggy.” This passage shifts the focus to her childhood experience of being in her body and “moving smoothly” through the water. Seeing the nudists enjoying the river, all of them happy with their imperfect bodies, makes Amelia wonder if she can reclaim some of that experience for herself and be more accepting of her own physicality.

“He recalled the heartfelt testimonial of one of Theo’s divorce clients. He buys me carnations, carnations are crap, every woman knows that, so why doesn’t he? Jackson beckoned Marlee out of the car and asked her to choose, and without any hesitation she picked the dahlias.”

Jackson struggles to choose flowers for his sister’s grave so he asks Marlee, who chooses dahlias. He defers to what he sees as Marlee’s innate feminine knowledge and hopes that her choice would have pleased his sister, Niamh. He thinks of carnations as representing a lack of care or attention, but dahlias represent Jackson’s love for Marlee and his sister.

“The clavicle was tiny and fragile, like an animal’s, a rabbit or a hare, the broken wishbone of a bird. Jackson kissed it reverently because he knew it was the holiest relic he would ever find.”

Olivia’s bones are compared to those of delicate animals that are hunted for food, like rabbits or birds. Her clavicle is a “broken wishbone,” representing a wish that was never made or granted. Jackson kisses her bones, as if they belonged to the body of a saint, grieving for Olivia, his sister, and the lost girls whose crimes will never be solved. Olivia represents the pain present in the world and the damage done by evil.

“This time she was taking the bug, the new bug, and she would love this baby so much that it would wake up every day in a state of bliss and she herself would be in a state of grace, at last.”

Previously, Caroline/Michelle called her first baby “the bug,” and the nickname seemed dehumanizing, representing her disgust with the child and motherhood in general. Though Caroline still thinks of her new baby as a “bug,” it now becomes a more affectionate and tender nickname. Caroline is finally able to access love for her child and hopes that her maternal tenderness will allow her to be “in a state of grace” rather than one of constant penitence. This passage illustrates The Complexity of Parent-Child Relationships.

 “It was like being a volcano, plugged and stoppered and unable to get rid of the boiling stuff inside. Which was called—what? Magma? Lava, for fuck’s sake. She couldn’t even remember the simplest words anymore.”

Michelle uses the simile of a volcano to express her rage, but she stumbles when trying to remember the correct terminology. This clues readers into her state of postpartum depression and anger, where sleep deprivation and isolation have robbed her of much of her identity. Though Michelle blames herself for failing at motherhood, Atkinson uses subtle clues to reveal that her psychological state is fragile due to her circumstances.

“In some odd way Theo identified Poppy with Lily-Rose—little abandoned, mistreated creatures with their new, flowery names.”

Theo brings home Lily-Rose, just as Laura brought home her dog Poppy years before. He draws parallels between the two of them, especially in their “new, flowery names” that represent happiness as opposed to their darker pasts. However, Theo recognizes that Lily-Rose must make her own choices and resolves to support her rather than attempt to control her—she is not a pet and should not be robbed of her agency. 

“The one thing he didn’t do was worry about her. So many bad things had happened to her that she was damage proofed. He was happy just to give her back a childhood.”

Building on the previous quotation, Theo does not hover over Lily-Rose. He spent much of his life with Laura trying to keep her from experiencing the world in an effort to keep her safe. However, with Lily-Rose, he realizes that this is futile since she has already been hurt. Instead, he tries to recreate a place of safety and happiness for her.

“Jean (‘Jean Stanton, lawyer, amateur rock climber, local Conservative Party secretary’) rushed up, all smiles and small bouncing breasts and said, ‘Good show. Everyone, this is Amelia Land. She’s so interesting.’”

When Amelia left for university, she imagined that she would have romantic afternoons punting on the river and that people might not call her pretty but would say she was interesting. In her afternoon with the nudists, she finally experiences the camaraderie and romance she imagined. To her new friends, she is interesting and attractive.

“And Amelia would fill Binky Rain’s garden with roses, with Duchesse d’Angoulême and Félicité Parmentier, Eglantines and Gertrude Jekylls, the pale rosettes of the Boule de Neige and the fragrant peachy Perdita, for their own lost girl.”

Amelia imagines a rose garden as a living memorial for Olivia, and she lists the different kinds of roses she will choose for the garden. The last, Perdita, is a literary allusion to Shakespeare’s play The Winter’s Tale. Perdita is a lost princess who is taken in by a shepherd. Amelia draws parallels between the beautiful and innocent Perdita and Olivia, “their own lost girl.”

“And he always spoke to her when she was in Victor’s study. That was when he said to her, ‘Suffer the little children,’ because she was still, after all, a child.”

Throughout this chapter, Sylvia lists the places where God speaks to her. Chillingly, God “always” speaks to her when her father abuses her, showing how she dissociates to cope with trauma. Her misunderstanding of the verse “suffer the little children” highlights her youth and vulnerability. It also underscores the grave evil of what Victor does.