Case Histories: A Novel

Sylvia is the eldest of the Land sisters and the ringleader when they are children. Her mother thinks of her as an ugly duckling that she cannot “see the swan in” (18): “Gawky, bespectacled Sylvia, her teeth recently caged in ugly orthodontic braces, had greasy hair, a hooting laugh, and the long, thin fingers and toes of an alien from outer space” (17). Sylvia’s father, Victor Land, is sexually molesting her, though she does not tell anyone this. Sylvia also believes she can hear the voices of God and Joan of Arc. She is her father’s favorite, ostensibly because she is good at math, but he is still cruel to her just as he is to his other daughters. She kills Olivia by accident and asks her father for help. He hides the body, and she never tells anyone the truth of what happened until Jackson finally confronts her. In adulthood, Sylvia becomes a cloistered nun and calls herself Sister Mary Luke.

Amelia is the second-oldest Land sister and is deeply traumatized by her loveless childhood. Amelia was a quiet, bookish girl who longed to be loved but who struggled to make friends. She believes she was spared from her father’s molestation by her own ugliness, and she experiences this as both a relief and a shame. As a young girl, she hoped that life in college would mean that she was “someone that people wanted to know” and that she would spend her time reading books “that you could fall in love with and lose yourself in forever” (187). However, she doesn’t get into college, and as an adult, she teaches communication skills to resentful students and has no real friends or lovers. She spends her time gardening and invents an imaginary boyfriend named Henry to appease Julia. During the novel, Amelia attempts suicide in a moment of crisis. Afterward, she has a new perspective on life and joins a group of nudists who accept her and see her body as normal rather than flawed. She begins a love affair with a woman in the group and devotes her life to caring for Binky Rain’s cats and garden. At the novel’s end, she has finally found some peace and happiness.

Julia is the third of the Land sisters and is five years older than Olivia. Her older sisters think she is often “annoying” and that she has “a bewilderingly mercurial personality—punching and kicking one minute, a sham of cooing and kissing the next” (27-28). Even as adults, she and Amelia bicker often because Amelia thinks that Julia is too loud and needs constant attention. Julia works as an actress, though she is not very successful, and as a secret shopper. She was not molested by Victor and tells Amelia that she fought back the one time he tried. She is “short and busty” and has “untamed” curly hair (108). She is flirtatious and vivacious but is also protective of Amelia and tender toward her, despite their bickering. By the novel’s end, she and Jackson are lovers, and she comes to visit him at his new home in France.

Olivia is the youngest Land sister and was beloved by her mother and her siblings. Amelia thinks, “Olivia was theirs, their very own pet lamb” (30). Olivia’s favorite toy is Blue Mouse, and she takes it everywhere with her. Sylvia accidentally kills Olivia, and Sylvia hides Olivia’s body with their father’s help. For many years, Olivia’s disappearance remains a mystery until Jackson solves the case. He discovers Olivia’s body and tells Amelia about it; Amelia decides to grow a rose garden around Olivia’s remains to honor her memory.

Michelle becomes a mother at a young age and drops out of school to marry Keith and have a baby, Tanya. She finds motherhood bewildering and overwhelming and thinks that “[t]he baby was a parcel delivered to the wrong address, with no way of sending it back or getting it redelivered” (56). She feels guilty for not loving her child the way she believes she should, but she also struggles to keep house and work toward attending school in their remote cottage with no help. When her sister Shirley kills Keith in a heated moment, Michelle feels that she is the one who should be punished. She sacrifices herself both out of love for her sister and guilt over her lack of maternal feeling. However, Atkinson hints to readers that Michelle’s self-blame is misplaced—she seems to be suffering from postpartum depression and a lack of support.

After prison, Michelle takes the identity of Caroline and works as a teacher in underfunded and failing schools. She thinks of herself as moving through “inner-city Gehennas so that one day she was destined to be head of some imploding school that she would have to try and rescue from disaster, like the captain of a sinking ship” (141). She accepts this fate as part of her atonement and sees herself as a “secular anchorite” (141). The plan changes when she meets rural landlord Jonathan and marries him. Her marriage is unhappy and Caroline falls secretly in love with their vicar. However, when Caroline discovers she is pregnant with Jonathan’s child, she realizes that she loves the baby too much to condemn the child to a life with Jonathan. She resolves to flee town and start her life again, but with her baby, thinking “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” (389). Whereas she has previously felt propelled forward by atoning for the past, she now feels that she needs to live for this child and move past the endless atonement.

Theo Wyre is an attorney. His wife, Valerie, died at the young age of 34 and left him with two daughters. His legal career revolves around charitable work, and he downshifts at the office in order to spend more time caring for his girls, Jennifer and Laura. Though he loves them both, he guiltily acknowledges that he loves Laura the most. This love takes the form of constant worry: “Every time Laura left the house he worried about her, every time she leaped on her bike, put on her wet suit, stepped on a train” (43). In part to assuage his worries, Laura takes a job in his office rather than a gap year before university. She is murdered there by Stuart, and her death completely derails Theo’s life.

After Laura’s death, Theo finds himself in a state of agonized stasis. He refuses to move on, worrying that doing so would mean that he has forgotten Laura. His stasis is manifested in his home, where he sets up a meticulous incident room devoted to her death, and in his body, which he neglects badly. He becomes morbidly obese and suffers from asthma attacks, one of which almost kills him. After his near-death experience, Theo realizes that he had fought hard not to die: “Laura hadn’t been given the chance to fight but he had and maybe that meant something, although exactly what, he wasn’t sure” (302-04). He dismantles the incident room and buys healthier food, eventually allowing Lily-Rose to move in and caring for her. His affection for Lily-Rose helps to redirect some of his grief and rage, exemplified by the fact that he does not pursue the name and address on the postcard Jackson sends him.