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, Kate Atkinson finds warmth even in life's bleakest moments, and shows an extraordinary ability to evoke the past. Here she is at her most profound and inventive, in a novel that celebrates the best and worst of ourselves.
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Ursula has lived many lives. This also means she has died many deaths. Set primarily in England in the interwar years, Life After Life follows Ursula, a woman for whom death only means a new life will begin with her having little more than a vague, instinctive memory of her past selves. As Ursula navigates each new life, she has the desperate desire to save her loved ones from the dangers that have befallen their past selves – only sometimes, she can't remember what that danger is. As the Second World War propels forward, tiny actions have huge consequences, and throughout her many lives, Ursula finds herself becoming many different women – including an air raid warden and a mother living in Nazi Germany. Life After Life is more than just a supernatural gimmick, though.
Kate Atkinson's characters are so vibrant and wonderful, and her writing is equally charming and poignant as she shows the sacrifices we make, and the many different people that we can become. I absolutely loved this book, would highly recommend it. - Madeleine (QBD)
Guest, 27/10/2018
