Life After Life: A Novel Audio CD – CD, April 2, 2013

I came to this book indirectly. A bookshop opposite my bus stop had a sign in the window for its successor, A God In Ruins. That led me back here, with mixed feelings. While I'm (perhaps too) attracted to the "What If" genre, it's only occasionally done well and I feared that this would be nothing more than Ken Grimwood's "Replay" reheated. (It's not. Not even remotely. And that's not a reflection one way or the other on Replay, they're simply very different books.) In any case I gave it a chance and read the introductory chapters, one of which introduced the central character's parents. A couple of lines had me with my face in my hands thinking "Not the 'free spirited woman stifled by a boring, unimaginative man' thing again, because that NEVER gets old." And thankfully, it wasn't. Again, not even remotely. Once I got into the story proper I could barely stop until I'd devoured the entire thing.What this is, in fact, is probably one of the most finely crafted novels I've read, on many levels. I'm giving away nothing (that isn't on the dust jacket) by saying that it's the story of a woman (Ursula Todd) whose life keeps repeating from her birth in 1910 up to her death in... well, that varies. She has no direct recollection of her past lifecycles, up to a point. She has only instincts about the things that happened, some of which she can influence, some of which she can't. The path of her own life runs differently depending on events that happen or don't; sometimes the difference is radical, sometimes more subtle. Not all of these things are in her control, as other people also make different decisions along the way. None of us are complete masters of our own destiny, much as we would like to believe otherwise.I don't think we ever see one complete path of Ursula's life, and this restraint on the part of the author is one of the things that make it such a good piece of writing. It must have been tempting to work through the whole timeline each time and milk it for all it's worth. Instead we're just taken to key points in Ursula's life in each cycle. Sometimes briefly, sometimes in detail. We see the things that determine the current cycle's path, or the outcomes of those things. Sometimes differences that have already occurred are alluded to, sometimes they're assumed to have changed in the way they had in a previous cycle. And sometimes it's left to the reader's imagination. (And at one point Atkinson throws us a nicely crafted curve which tricks the reader, but I can't describe that without a spoiler. It's after the war, and you'll know it when you see it.Another example of this is with Ursula's parents. There's another entire story there, yet we're offered only glimpses into it. We know about certain events but we never get to find out what the context of those events was... much as Ursula herself doesn't. In real life you can never know everything about another person, no matter how close you are. Atkinson resists the temptation to prop the reader into the "God seat" and take them behind the scenes. Oddly this makes the read more rather than less gratifying. There are no neatly wrapped endings or explanations, no unquestionable truths. (Not even for Ursula's own life, much less those that her life crosses with.) The reader is therefore drawn into the story, to make of certain things what they will, never knowing for sure whether they were right about them. Again, much like life, really. Aside from which it's much harder to achieve certainty here, given the looping nature of the narrative. Did Ursula's mother have an affair in one of Ursula's lives but not another? Did she have an affair in none of them, and the hint that we were thrown in one cycle was simply an out of context distraction? More intriguingly, has Atkinson preserved material for another follow up book or two?Another thing that appeals about this is the characterisation. It would be hard to say that we know many of the characters intimately. They're sketches rather than detailed paintings, but again, that's pretty true to life. However they're generally consistent sketches, though with some discordant notes here and there. (Even in the little details; I could never imagine her sister Pamela smoking as she did in one cycle, for example (especially given her scientific leanings and her husband's description of autopsies of smokers), but it's not beyond the bounds of possibility especially given that in that cycle her mother did as well.) Yet these notes are not so much "completely out of character" as "this is another path this character might have gone down". Another example is when Ursula found out that her one time / some times boyfriend had acquired a taste for a particular sport in his later years despite disliking it when she knew him.We all change... and doubtless we would change in different ways in different circumstances. This, I think, is part of Atkinson's point.For me the key thing about the characters is that there is a diversity of them; likeable, unlikeable, difficult, sharing, selfish... without them devolving into mere caricatures. There is a certain sameness about how people are supposed to react to the characters - for example, everyone supposedly loving Teddy when I only felt somewhat indifferent to him and couldn't understand why he was the loveable one - but I think that was done mainly to avoid the need to get bogged down in minutiae. This, after all, is Ursula's story. Teddy has his own in the sequel, something that I have no doubt Atkinson had in mind as she was writing this one.Finally the storytelling. In a couple of instances I could see clearly where things would lead, and yet the writing, the characters and the story itself kept me moving along with it to discover the specifics. Your mileage may vary, but I for one wasn't disappointed.There is one area where it squibs a little, but unfortunately I can't say very much about that without introducing huge spoilers. In the afterword Atkinson refers to one of her motivations in writing the book, which is one of history's "What Ifs". And yet that very thing is what is ultimately glossed over. Suppose that your life was to be dedicated to nudging history in a different direction? First, "why you?" given that (in this case) someone born 5 years earlier and elsewhere in the world would be much better at giving it that nudge? Second, can you even make a difference to the broad sweep of history, as opposed to the lives of a few individuals? (Michael Crichton's "Timeline" had an interesting discussion on this. The book, not the movie. Gods no, not the movie, please.) Third, if you do change it, how can you be sure that you are changing it for the better rather than the worse? Fourth, even if you do change it for the better is that what your life then becomes; an endless loop of going back and doing the same sequence of things over and over again, for if so, what's the point? Stephen King's 11/22/63 spent chapters on some of these issues (and King is hardly a terse writer), yet they remain relatively unexamined in "Life After Life".But in the overall scheme of things that's a minor niggle in a book as good as this one. When it comes to the difference between words and deeds, my next deed after posting this review will be to buy its sequel.

Summary: A wonderful book that is at once deeply philosophical and thoroughly enjoyable, while bringing the first half of the 20th century to vivid life.For a book titled Life after Life, there certainly is an abundance of death in Kate Atkinson's wonderful new novel. Given the setting - the book's arc encompasses both World Wars - that is hardly surprising. Atkinson, however, takes her exploration of death a step further. She makes it omnipresent in a way that would have pleased the philosophers Søren Kierkegaard or Martin Heidegger. Kierkegaard wrote that most people live their lives while studiously ignoring their impending death. That is to say, we know that we will someday die, but we treat our death as a future event with little bearing on the present. We are mistaken. Death is real, inevitable, and can come at any time. Kierkegaard was only halfway joking when he wrote that when accepting an invitation to a party, you should not say, "I shall certainly attend," but rather, "I shall certainly attend your party, but I must make an exception for the contingency that a roof tile happens to blow down and kill me; for in that case, I cannot attend."If Kierkegaard had lived today and had written a novel (a lot of "ifs" I know, but bear with me), it might have looked something like Life after Life. Martin Heidegger - who shared Kierkegaard's philosophy of death - wrote that "As soon as a man comes to life, he is at once old enough to die." And sure enough, the book's heroine Ursula Todd has no sooner been born than she departs this world, her umbilical cord wrapped around her little neck. This is no spoiler. It happens within the first ten pages. As the story unfolds, Ursula dies, and dies, and dies. She drowns. She falls. She is crushed. She is shot. She asphyxiates. And each death starts a new life, a chance to do it over again, a chance to get it right.The result, for me, was a rather novel experience in which I read in constant anticipation of death, the precise state of mind in which Kierkegaard and Heidegger insisted we should all live. The question constantly lurked: when will Urusula die? Rather than being morbid, this obsession with death adds an extra measure of poignancy to each telling of Ursula's life. It also allows Atkinson to explore the contingency of life. As we go through cycle after cycle of Ursula's life, we see how the smallest events can change the course of an entire existence. A chance encounter with one of her brother's friends leads a young Ursula to a life of misery. A decision to take a walk saves a life. The gas on the stove flits out for a moment, and she dies. It stays on, and she lives another twenty years. Chance plays a role, as do the decisions of Ursula and the cast of interesting characters that surround her. There is no fate, only repetition.Which is another of Kierkegaard's favorite subjects. Indeed, I suspect that Atkinson has read her fair share of the Danish philosopher. Fortunately, her book is a more enjoyable read than anything Kierkegaard produced (which is not damning with faint praise, as I rather enjoy Kierkegaard). Normally the use of words like "fug", "thrawn", and "pulchritude" might be enough to turn me off, but Atkinson is a good enough writer to get away with such embellishments. And she brings the past to vivid life, particularly the Blitz. Some of the images she invokes - crawling though the ruins of an apartment building and finding oneself kneeling on the spongy remains of a baby caught in the explosion - will stick with me for some time, though I might rather forget them. And I was glad to see that Atkinson also takes us inside the German bomb shelters. For as horrible as the Blitz was, the bombing of Germany was much, much worse. More than 40,000 civilians were killed in England, while between 300,000 and 500,000 German civilians died in RAF bombings that did little to aid the Allied war effort, but which certainly exacted a grizzly revenge for the Blitz.Life after Life does not have much in the way of traditional plot, nor could it, considering the frequent deaths of its heroine. It is a meditation on the nature of life and a character study, and fortunately, Atkinson has peopled it with a number of compelling characters. Ursula's acerbic mother and kind father, her boorish older brother and sweet, clear-headed sister Pamela, her unorthodox aunt, her lovers, neighbors, and friends are all vividly portrayed. Indeed, the cast of characters is rich enough that the necessarily repetitive nature of the novel never becomes tedious. In addition, Atkinson does a wonderful job of continually tweaking the book's formula in order to keep the reader interested. When a moment in her life starts to grow stale, the book moves on. Sometimes, I longed for Ursula to dies. Sometimes, I rooted for her to live.In the end, Ursula embraces her mortality in a way that is a bit fantastical, but utterly satisfying. Kierkegaard felt that to truly live, we must accept that we could die at any time. By the end of Life after Life, it is safe to say that Ursula Todd has surely done so.

"Life after life" is the kind of book you hope to encounter whenever you pickup a novel for the first time. I had read the follow up "A god in ruins" not knowing what to expect and was engrossed in that novel to the extent that there was a sharp intake of breath when I ultimately got to the end. . Whilst this book covers the fate of the same family and even covers much of the same time line, both can be read on their own. However, having read either of the two, there is a fair chance of wanting to read the other. Intriguingly, there are little elements within this first volume which I cannot recall getting answered in the second and I would be very keen to read a third novel about the Todd family. Simply put, this novel takes the notion of having different possibilities open to you throughout life and puts the main protagonist in amongst a wealth of alternatives, the principle storyline looking at the Second World war through both an English and German perspective. The idea may seem too eccentric to work but Kate Atkinson pulls the ideas off with aplomb.For me, there are two elements of great story telling. There first is to create such strong characters that we know who they are when speaking because their voices come out so strongly in the dialogue. All the characters in this book are terrific , whether it is the flaky Irish housemaid Bridget or my particular favourite, the incorrigible aunt and authoress, Izzy who surely deserves a book of her own. The other component is having the sensation of being plunged in to a world where the people and places seem real and who you feel sad to leave behind when you finish the book.Kate Atkinson has tapped in to something truly wonderful in this book and whilst both this and "A God in ruins" ultimately reveal a more shocking face of 20th century life than initially supposed in the two differing accounts of the Second World War from the perspective of both the bomber and the bombed, there seem enough potential in the little world she has created to make another visit to Fox Corner highly desirable. This is a fantastic novel.

I could not get into this lengthy book, I am afraid. I read it for the book club, otherwise It would be left unfinished. An interesting idea for a shorter novel, but this one is, in my opinion, overworked, repetitive and predictable. I was hoping it would all come together at the end with some deeper meaning or a twist, but alas no. Characters not developed enough to care for any of them and there is nothing too interesting in the historical backdrop to the plot. Seeing the glowing reviews, I was expecting much more. A frustrating read.

I read this book after reading its companion, A God in Ruins. Normally, one is recommended to read them in the opposite order to me (LAL, and then AGIR). However, this is definitely not necessary, even though the books are about members of the same family.I absolutely loved A God in Ruins, and gave it a 5-star review as the most moving book I have read in a very long time. Ironically, I had to warm to A God in Ruins, and let it grow on me; Life After Life was the opposite - I started off being very intrigued with the idea of reincarnation (but into the same body), and gradually lost interest in it. Similarly, the culmination of A God in Ruins left me quite astonished, while I was left quite underwhelmed by the culmination of Life After Life - indeed, I guessed the final plot event long before I got to the end.The bad: This book seemed like a patchwork quilt of various story ideas the author had, crammed together to make one story. I was quite willing to suspend disbelief to buy into the idea of the central character dying, and then having "another go" at life. However, she died so many times, in so many different ways, that her bad luck became almost comically implausible. Also, some life stories were very abbreviated, and others (especially the "last but two", concentrating on Ursula's experiences as an air raid warden) seemed to labour on, with much more detail. In the first half of the book, the life stories re-started at birth, whereas in the second half of the book, they started mid-life. Because the same characters and events cropped up in multiple life stories, but in a different context, I found myself losing track of what had and hadn't happened in "this life". Also, some characters appeared in one life story and didn't reappear until a much later life story, by which point you had forgotten who this person was.The good: Kate Atkinson writes about the second world war in a way that helps you understand the experiences of real people who lived through it. As with A God in Ruins, there are are many deaths (not just those of Ursula, the central character!), and once again (as with A God in Ruins), you are reminded of the need to move on and not dwell on not just the deaths, but the gruesome event that led to the deaths, especially in the long Blitz section of the book. I also liked being brought to situations in the central character's life that had happened before, and being shown how just one slight difference meant that a drastic meeting, or event no longer occurred.Overall, though, the "clever" bits of the book became tedious. Also, the major event that happened in the central character's "last but one" life (I think!) was dealt with very superficially, and her life up to that event was rushed through - almost as if the author was in a rush to get to "the big event", and was getting tired of describing the latest reiteration of Ursula's life story up to that point. Overall, the writing in the first two-thirds of the book was good, but after that, it gradually fizzled out and became rather laborious to read. 600 pages is too long for this book. Like the film "Sliding Doors" (worth a watch), it would have been more enjoyable if the central character only lived a handful of different lives, instead of what was probably close to a dozen or more.

Having enjoyed the Jackson Brodie novels, I was looking forward to this. What a disappointment! A half decent science fiction author would have addressed the central conceit of this book in a few pages. Ms Atkinson's plot moves with glacial slowness. The 'wibbly-wobbly, timey wimy' stuff, to quote Doctor Who, just doesn't work. And the constant jumps between dates is just confusing. W S Cambell once said that all fiction is just a branch of science fiction. This could have been a half-decent historical novel about life between the wars, instead it's a mess and reinforces my belief that all prize winning novels should be avoided.

As someone who used to love reading, who was never without a book on the go, I've fallen into an almighty rut, recently. Books I thought would be interesting have been abandoned halfway, through sheer boredom, esteemed and recommended authors who seem to be unable to even write coherently -- I was beginning to wonder if I'd ever enjoy reading a book again, feel that thrill of actually wanting to find out what happens next.And then I read this. Phew.Life After Life is ambitious and epic in its scope, covering almost sixty years of tumultuous British history as seen through the eyes of Ursula Todd, who is born, dies, re-born, dies again, is re-born and carries on through a dangerous, ever-changing world in a cycle of death and rebirth until, one assumes, it all works out. Its central conceit could be accused of being gimmicky, but Atkinson's gift is creating whole, credible and thoroughly engaging characters. You grieve for them when they die, you cheer for them when they reappear in another time-line, fantastic as it might be. Her prose, meanwhile, just shines, and I can't remember the last time I read a book that made me both laugh one moment and then catch my breath in sadness the next. There's a lot going on, here, and you do learn a lot about the people who made up Britain's modern history, but Atkinson conveys it all with real compassion and skill The tales from the Blitz, with its relentless and indiscriminate deaths amid the fire and dust and noise, balanced with the occasional small moments of humanity and beauty are particularly well evoked. Her dialogue is authentic, filled with humour and humanity. This book was a joy to read, start to finish, and I've already lined up the sequel to read next. After that, I guess I'll have to read more Atkinson!