Are there any other fans of Kate Atkinson here? I ask not just because I think she's a brilliant novelist, but because she often mentions, seemingly in passing, that one or another of her characters is an atheist, and it seems to me that they are often her most likable characters. She does it in a way that suggests it's the most natural thing imaginable, that it's almost not worth mentioning. She's English, and perhaps in the U.K. atheism is indeed unremarkable, but then I wonder, Why mention it at all?

My favorite book of hers (so far) is Life After Life. Wikipedia offers a handy description:

The novel has an unusual structure, repeatedly looping back in time to describe alternative possible lives for its central character, Ursula Todd, who is born on 11 February 1910 to an upper-middle-class family near Chalfont St Peter in Buckinghamshire. In the first version, she is strangled by her umbilical cord and stillborn. In later iterations of her life she dies as a child - drowning in the sea, or when saved from that, by falling to her death from the roof when trying to retrieve a fallen doll. Then there are several sequences when she falls victim to the Spanish flu epidemic of 1918 - which repeats itself again and again, though she already has a foreknowledge of it, and only her fourth attempt to avert catching the flu succeeds.

This illustrates a couple of things that I love about her work. First: She thinks outside the box. Even her Jackson Brodie detective novels are more like character studies strung together around a convoluted mystery plot involving multiple crimes, not all of which Brodie will solve, than traditional murder mysteries. Second: She's great at giving me a real feel for a historical period. For example, rather than just describe how devastating the Spanish flu was, she has it kill off her main character three times. Third: She's not above introducing hints of paranormal phenomena, but she does so without ever suggesting that the universe actually has some sort of intrinsic meaning. If you cringe at any departure in your fiction from a world that strictly follows the laws of nature, this book isn't for you. I personally enjoy the occasional paranormal activity in a novel, or the plot twist that's a bit too good to be true, so long as the author doesn't suggest there's some omnipotent being behind it.

Perhaps most importantly, Kate Atkinson has an ability to put me inside the heads of many very different characters, and she has a wicked dry sense of humor. Is anyone else a fan?