Life After Life
A Novel
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4.0 • 132 Ratings
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- $8.99
Publisher Description
"Is there Life After Life, chance after chance to rewrite one's destiny? That is the question posed by Atkinson's tale and brought to life by the miracle of her talent." —Toronto Star
What if you had the chance to live your life again and again, until you finally got it right?
During a snowstorm in England in 1910, a baby is born and dies before she can take her first breath.
During a snowstorm in England in 1910, the same baby is born and lives to tell the tale.
What if there were second chances? And third chances? In fact an infinite number of chances to live your life? Would you eventually be able to save the world from its own inevitable destiny? And would you even want to?
Life After Life follows Ursula Todd as she lives through the turbulent events of the last century again and again. With wit and compassion, she finds warmth even in life's bleakest moments, and shows an extraordinary ability to evoke the past. Here is Kate Atkinson at her most profound and inventive, in a novel that celebrates the best and worst of ourselves.
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
In Kate Atkinson’s latest novel, Ursula Todd is born, dies, and yet lives her life again and again in a story of shifting times and history. While it’s no straightforward tale, trust that you’re in the hands of a master storyteller. Atkinson’s bewitching tale ultimately considers deep questions in ways that are profound, touching, and funny.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Atkinson's new novel (after Started Early, Took My Dog) opens twice: first in Germany in 1930 with an English woman taking a shot at Hitler, then in England in 1910 when a baby arrives, stillborn. And then it opens again: still in 1910, still in England, but this time the baby lives. That baby is Ursula Todd, and as she grows up, she dies and lives repeatedly. Watching Atkinson bring Ursula into the world yet again initially feels like a not terribly interesting trick: we know authors have the power of life and death. But as Ursula and the century age, and war and epidemic and war come again, the fact of death, of "darkness," as Atkinson calls it, falling on cities and people now Ursula, now someone else, now Ursula again turns out to be central. At heart this is a war story; half the book is given over to Ursula's activities during WWII, and in its focus on the women and civilians usually overlooked or downplayed, it gives the Blitz its full measure of terror. By the end, which takes us back to that moment in 1930 and beyond, it's clear that Atkinson's not playing tricks; rather, through Ursula's many lives and the accretion of what T.S. Eliot called "visions and revisions," she's found an inventive way to make both the war's toll and the pull of alternate history, of darkness avoided or diminished, fresh.
Customer Reviews
Life after Life
While reading this offering, by Kate Atkinson, I found myself wondering how many times I was going to have to read, read and reread the same chapter. This book deals with reincarnation, which is in and of itself, an exciting and interesting theory. However, in my opinion, if an author writes about a series of events, and then puts the reader through almost the exact same passages, over and over, with only subtle details changing... Well, it becomes very boring, and tedious. Ms. Atkinson did show that she did a fair amount of research, by illuminating life in war-torn London in WWII, and may have gotten some ideas for her story from "The Kindly Ones". I am glad that I finally made it through this book-I hoped for an exciting ending, that would make up for the repetitive nature of this work, but sadly it disappointed me. It originally came to my attention as An Editors Pick in the I Store-it certainly would not classify as a pick of mine, nor would i recommend it to anyone.