Kate Atkinson - One Good Turn

I don't know how she does it, but Kate Atkinson always pulls me in. There's nothing about the story of One Good Turn that ought to draw me, but she's just such a great storyteller that I'm carried along regardless; the characters aren't the kind to particularly attract me (though Jackson Brodie is, in his rumpled way, pretty compelling), yet almost immediately I feel as if I'm inhabiting their world, that I understand them, and (usually) I'm rooting for them; it doesn't seem that the mood she creates is anything remarkable, but her books always leave me with a lingering sense of strongly felt but curiously indefinable feelings. For mine, this one and Case Histories don't quite match those giddy first couple she wrote (Behind the Scenes... and Human Croquet) in terms of their effect on me, but they're a step up in 'quality' - give me more!