kate atkinson life after life book review

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By Francine Prose

• April 26, 2013

“After the first death, there is no other,” Dylan Thomas wrote. How obvious, one might think. But the one-time-only nature of death is anything but self-evident in Kate Atkinson’s new novel, “Life After Life.”

Its heroine, Ursula Todd, keeps dying, then dying again. She dies when she is being born, on a snowy night in 1910. As a child, she drowns, falls off a roof and contracts influenza. Later, she commits suicide and is murdered. She is killed during the German bombing of London in World War II and ends her life in the ruins of Berlin in 1945. Each time Ursula dies, Atkinson — a British writer best known here as the author of “Case Histories,” the first in a series of highly entertaining mysteries featuring the sleuth Jackson Brodie — resurrects her and sets her on one of the many alternate courses that her destiny might have taken.

A great deal of experience, and 20th-century history, transpires in the intervals separating Ursula’s sudden and often violent exits from the world of the living. The novel begins with a scene in which she assassinates Hitler. Her serial and parallel existences take her through two brutal world wars and well into the 1960s. But each turn in her story is, like the end(s) of her life, subject to revision. As a teenager living at Fox Corner, her family home in the British countryside, she is raped and becomes pregnant, but in another version the encounter with her American attacker involves little more than a stolen kiss. A bullying first marriage is endured, and its ensuing tragedy wiped clean from the slate. Romances begin and end, then begin again, taking different trajectories.

Ursula learns about her father’s death in a letter she receives in Germany, where she has been trapped by the outbreak of World War II, and where she befriends Eva Braun and visits the Führer at his mountaintop retreat. But in a different rendition, she is in England when her father succumbs to a heart attack, and with her family for his funeral. A murdered child turns out not to be dead. Or is she? A dog named Lucky makes cameo appearances that the reader can’t help seeing through the scrim of the transient but critical roles that the dog has already played in the plot.

The mostly brief chapters, dated by month and year, keep us oriented amid the rapid chronological shifts backward and forward. And there are several relatively still points around which the whirling machinery turns. Sylvie, Ursula’s mother, remains dependably snobbish and caustic, just as Ursula’s free-spirited Aunt Izzie continues to provide shelter, help and the example of nervy rebelliousness for which such aunts are created in fiction and film. In several of her lives, Ursula attends secretarial school in London and travels in Continental Europe.

Atkinson’s juggling a lot at once — and nimbly succeeds in keeping the novel from becoming confusing. Even so, reading the book is a mildly vertiginous experience, rather like using the “scenes” function on a DVD to scramble the film’s original order. At times “Life After Life” suggests a cross between Noël Coward’s “Brief Encounter” and those interactive “hypertext” novels whose computer-savvy readers can determine the direction of the story.

The first few reverses are startling, but after a while it begins to seem quite normal (if still pleasantly jolting) when a character who, we think, has left the narrative forever reappears in another guise or is seen from a new perspective. And the surprise of what happens is less intense than the unexpectedness of what doesn’t happen: what seemingly irreversible damage is repaired with the “delete” key.

In theory, this narrative method should violate one of the most basic contracts a writer makes with the reader: the promise that what happens to the characters actually does (insofar as the author knows) happen to the characters. But it’s interesting to note how quickly Atkinson’s new rules replace the old ones, how assuredly she rewrites the contract: we will stay tuned as long as she keeps us interested and curious about what all this is adding up to. Each tragedy continues to surprise and disturb us, even as we learn to expect that the victim will be all right in the morning.

Inevitably, metaphysics creeps in. We travel and return to the psychiatrist’s office where Ursula’s parents take her, at age 10, for sessions in which the conversation touches on reincarnation and the nature of time. When Dr. Kellet suggests that the moody, spacey Ursula may be remembering other lives and asks her to draw something, she produces a snake with its tail in its mouth. “It’s a symbol representing the circularity of the universe,” the doctor explains. “Time is a construct, in reality everything flows, no past or present, only the now.”

Atkinson is having fun with this, as she often seems to be in the novel, which is as much about writing as it is about anything else. So many excellent books are read and quoted by its characters that the novel could provide a useful bibliography. Here’s a partial list of writers alluded to in these pages: Austen, Byron, Keats, Eliot (George and T. S.), Dante, Dickens, ­Donne, Marvell, D. H. Lawrence, Ibsen and Marlowe.

It crosses one’s mind that Ursula’s marriage to the controlling and bullying Derek Oliphant, fervently at work on his textbook about the Tudors and the Plantagenets, seems familiar. Eventually, Ursula discovers that her husband’s book is basically nonsense, and comes to the conclusion that fans of “Middlemarch” will already have reached. “She had married a Casaubon, she realized.”

Ursula takes “The Magic Mountain” with her when she goes up to the Berghof with Eva Braun, only to be informed, by a “nice” officer in the Wehrmacht, that Mann’s novel is one of the books that have been banned by the Nazi Party. And one of the dark plot threads running through the weft of the novel — the disappearance of a little girl — recalls Atkinson’s own “Case Histories.”

“Life After Life” makes the reader acutely conscious of an author’s power: how much the novelist can do. Kill a character, bring her back. Start a world war or prevent one. Bomb London, destroy Berlin. Write a scene from one point of view, then rewrite it from another. Try it this way, then that. Make your character perish in a bombed-out building during the blitz, then make her part of the rescue team that (in a scene with the same telling details) tries unsuccessfully to save her.

One of the things I like most about British mystery novels (including Kate Atkinson’s)is the combination of good writing and a certain theatrical bravado. Their authors enjoy showing us how expertly they can construct a puzzle, then solve it: the literary equivalent of pulling a rabbit out of a hat. “Life After Life” inspires a similar sort of admiration, as Atkinson sharpens our awareness of the apparently limitless choices and decisions that a novelist must make on every page, and of what is gained and lost when the consequences of these choices are, like life, singular and final.

LIFE AFTER LIFE

By Kate Atkinson

529 pp. A Reagan Arthur Book/Little, Brown & Company. $27.99.

Francine Prose’s most recent novel is “My New American Life.”

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In 'life after life,' caught in the dangerous machinery of history.

Meg Wolitzer

Life After Life

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Flannery O'Connor said short stories need to have a beginning, a middle and an end, though not necessarily in that order. But what about novels? Kate Atkinson seems to believe there can be a beginning, a middle and an end, and then another beginning, plus several more middles ... and why not have a beginning again?

What she's done in her masterful new book, Life After Life, is prove that what makes a long piece of fiction succeed might have very little to do with the progression of its story, and more to do with something hard to define and even harder to produce: a fully-realized world. Atkinson not only invites readers in but also asks them to give up their preconceptions of what a novel should be, and instead accept what a novel can be.

When I started Life After Life, I have to admit, I wasn't sure I wanted to keep going. I was disoriented, and I thought maybe the problem was me — maybe I was just dumb. In the opening pages, in a German cafe in November 1930, a woman raises a gun and shoots Adolf Hitler. Gamely anticipating the consequences of that action — even if they held the possibility of Twilight Zone cheesiness — I turned the page, only to find that there were no consequences, at least not yet, for the clock had turned back 20 years and the action had moved to another locale.

Now it's England in February 1910, and a baby is about to be born, but the doctor hasn't arrived yet: " 'Dr. Fellowes should have been here,' Sylvie moaned. 'Why isn't he here yet? Where is he?' ... 'Yer man'll be stuck in the snow, I expect, ma'm,' " says Bridget, the maid. And then, moments later: " 'Oh, ma'am,' Bridget cried suddenly, 'she's all blue, so she is.' "

The death of a baby, of course, is an unbearably sad thing, and surely the fallout of that death will come in the next chapter. The grieving parents, the lost possibilities. But no. Because, in the next chapter, the road is open, and Sylvie, who has just given birth, asks, "A girl, Dr. Fellowes? May I see her?" To which he replies, " 'Yes, Mrs. Todd, a bonny, bouncing baby girl.' Sylvie thought Dr. Fellowes might be over-egging the pudding with his alliteration. He was not one for bonhomie at the best of times."

Kate Atkinson is also the author of Started Early, Took My Dog. Courtesy Hachette Book Group hide caption

But the exaggerated buoyancy of the doctor is meant to contrast with the gloom of the previous version of the delivery. This is arch but serious stuff, and for a while there, it's hard to know how Atkinson wants her readers to feel about it.

But I kept on reading because I suspected, this being Kate Atkinson, that it would transform itself, and it certainly did. Ursula Todd — who happens to be the woman in the cafe, as well as the baby turning blue, and the baby not turning blue — is the novel's main character. In a sense she's meant to be you — just another soul who has the misfortune of being born, living and getting caught in the dangerous machinery of history.

And the dangers abound. Ursula is raped and impregnated — unless, wait, she isn't raped and impregnated at all. For in another version she manages to rebuff her would-be attacker, and in yet another version, the moment between her and this same man turns out to be merely lightly amorous. At one point, Atkinson places Ursula in prewar Germany, where she befriends a young Eva Braun; and then, during the war, she's seen working in London on a rescue unit, grimly coping with its everyday shocks and horrors. In an alternate reality, Ursula works in wartime intelligence. What impresses me about this flip book of nonstop scenarios — in wartime and peacetime — is not only how absorbing they are, but how brave Atkinson is to have written them. After all, there really isn't much recent precedent for a major, serious yet playfully experimental novel with a female character at its center. Good for her to have given us one; we needed it.

Life after life grind on for Ursula and all the members of her family, who, though their outcomes change, remain roughly the same people throughout the book. Maurice, the horrible brother no one can stand, is horrible in every version of this story. And Ursula, while not a world-beater except perhaps in her big Hitler moment, is always human and readable.

In real life, people inevitably have to make choices about how to live. (You can't live all ways.) But Kate Atkinson didn't choose one path for Ursula Todd, and she didn't need to. Instead, she opened her novel outward, letting it breathe unrestricted, all the while creating a strong, inviting draft of something that feels remarkably like life.

Meg Wolitzer i s the author o f The Interestings, which comes out in April.

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Awards & Accolades

Our Verdict

Kirkus Reviews' Best Books Of 2013

New York Times Bestseller

LIFE AFTER LIFE

by Kate Atkinson ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 2, 2013

Provocative, entertaining and beautifully written. It’s not quite the tour de force that her Case Histories (2004) was, but...

If you could travel back in time and kill Hitler, would you? Of course you would.

Atkinson’s ( Started Early, Took My Dog , 2011, etc.) latest opens with that conceit, a hoary what-if of college dorm discussions and, for that matter, of other published yarns (including one,  mutatis mutandis , by no less an eminence than George Steiner). But Atkinson isn’t being lazy, not in the least: Her protagonist’s encounter with der Führer is just one of several possible futures. Call it a more learned version of  Groundhog Day , but that character can die at birth, or she can flourish and blossom; she can be wealthy, or she can be a fugitive; she can be the victim of rape, or she can choose her sexual destiny. All these possibilities arise, and all take the story in different directions, as if to say: We scarcely know ourselves, so what do we know of the lives of those who came before us, including our own parents and—in this instance—our unconventional grandmother? And all these possibilities sometimes entwine, near to the point of confusion. In one moment, for example, the conversation turns to a child who has died; reminds Ursula, our heroine, “Your daughter....She fell in the fire,” an event the child’s poor mother gainsays: “ ‘I only ever had Derek,’ she concluded firmly.” Ah, but there’s the rub with alternate realities, all of which, Atkinson suggests, can be folded up into the same life so that all are equally real. Besides, it affords several opportunities to do old Adolf in, what with his “funny little flap of the hand backward so that he looked as if he were cupping his ear to hear them better” and all.

Pub Date: April 2, 2013

ISBN: 978-0-316-17648-4

Page Count: 544

Publisher: Reagan Arthur/Little, Brown

Review Posted Online: Jan. 20, 2013

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2013

MYSTERY & DETECTIVE | HISTORICAL MYSTERY | GENERAL MYSTERY & DETECTIVE

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PERSPECTIVES

A CONSPIRACY OF BONES

by Kathy Reichs ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 17, 2020

Forget about solving all these crimes; the signal triumph here is (spoiler) the heroine’s survival.

Another sweltering month in Charlotte, another boatload of mysteries past and present for overworked, overstressed forensic anthropologist Temperance Brennan.

A week after the night she chases but fails to catch a mysterious trespasser outside her town house, some unknown party texts Tempe four images of a corpse that looks as if it’s been chewed by wild hogs, because it has been. Showboat Medical Examiner Margot Heavner makes it clear that, breaking with her department’s earlier practice ( The Bone Collection , 2016, etc.), she has no intention of calling in Tempe as a consultant and promptly identifies the faceless body herself as that of a young Asian man. Nettled by several errors in Heavner’s analysis, and even more by her willingness to share the gory details at a press conference, Tempe launches her own investigation, which is not so much off the books as against the books. Heavner isn’t exactly mollified when Tempe, aided by retired police detective Skinny Slidell and a host of experts, puts a name to the dead man. But the hints of other crimes Tempe’s identification uncovers, particularly crimes against children, spur her on to redouble her efforts despite the new M.E.’s splenetic outbursts. Before he died, it seems, Felix Vodyanov was linked to a passenger ferry that sank in 1994, an even earlier U.S. government project to research biological agents that could control human behavior, the hinky spiritual retreat Sparkling Waters, the dark web site DeepUnder, and the disappearances of at least four schoolchildren, two of whom have also turned up dead. And why on earth was Vodyanov carrying Tempe’s own contact information? The mounting evidence of ever more and ever worse skulduggery will pull Tempe deeper and deeper down what even she sees as a rabbit hole before she confronts a ringleader implicated in “Drugs. Fraud. Breaking and entering. Arson. Kidnapping. How does attempted murder sound?”

Pub Date: March 17, 2020

ISBN: 978-1-9821-3888-2

Page Count: 352

Publisher: Scribner

Review Posted Online: Dec. 22, 2019

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2020

GENERAL MYSTERY & DETECTIVE | GENERAL THRILLER & SUSPENSE | MYSTERY & DETECTIVE | SUSPENSE | THRILLER | DETECTIVES & PRIVATE INVESTIGATORS | SUSPENSE | GENERAL & DOMESTIC THRILLER

More by Kathy Reichs

by Kathy Reichs

by David Baldacci ‧ RELEASE DATE: Dec. 2, 1997

Irritatingly trite woman-in-periler from lawyer-turned-novelist Baldacci. Moving away from the White House and the white-shoe Washington law firms of his previous bestsellers (Absolute Power, 1996; Total Control, 1997), Baldacci comes up with LuAnn Tyler, a spunky, impossibly beautiful, white-trash truck stop waitress with a no-good husband and a terminally cute infant daughter in tow. Some months after the birth of Lisa, LuAnn gets a phone call summoning her to a make-shift office in an unrented storefront of the local shopping mall. There, she gets a Faustian offer from a Mr. Jackson, a monomaniacal, cross-dressing manipulator who apparently knows the winning numbers in the national lottery before the numbers are drawn. It seems that LuAnn fits the media profile of what a lottery winner should be—poor, undereducated but proud—and if she's willing to buy the right ticket at the right time and transfer most of her winnings to Jackson, she'll be able to retire in luxury. Jackson fails to inform her, however, that if she refuses his offer, he'll have her killed. Before that can happen, as luck would have it, LuAnn barely escapes death when one of husband Duane's drug deals goes bad. She hops on a first-class Amtrak sleeper to Manhattan with a hired executioner in pursuit. But executioner Charlie, one of Jackson's paid handlers, can't help but hear wedding bells when he sees LuAnn cooing with her daughter. Alas, a winning $100- million lottery drawing complicates things. Jackson spirits LuAnn and Lisa away to Sweden, with Charlie in pursuit. Never fear. Not only will LuAnn escape a series of increasingly violent predicaments, but she'll also outwit Jackson, pay an enormous tax bill to the IRS, and have enough left over to honeymoon in Switzerland. Too preposterous to work as feminine wish-fulfillment, too formulaic to be suspenseful. (Book-of-the-Month Club main selection)

Pub Date: Dec. 2, 1997

ISBN: 0-446-52259-7

Page Count: 528

Publisher: N/A

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 1997

GENERAL MYSTERY & DETECTIVE | MYSTERY & DETECTIVE

More by David Baldacci

by David Baldacci

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Life After Life by Kate Atkinson – review

O n a snowy night in 1910, a baby is born with the cord wrapped around her neck and, because the doctor is delayed by the weather, she is dead within minutes. But a page or so later, she's born again and this time the doctor makes it through the snow "just in the nick of time" and the baby lives.

Ursula enjoys a balmy, prewar, English country childhood, with brothers and sisters and servants and picnics and seaside outings. But the theme of drastically alternative outcomes continues. At five years old, playing in the waves with her big sister, Ursula slips in the undertow and drowns.

Yet again, we prepare to mourn her. But no, here it is all over again – the summer's day, the crucial, dangerous moment. And this time an amateur artist happens to have set up his easel close to where the children are playing and he sees Ursula go under and returns both girls "sopping wet and tearful" to their grateful mother.

Much of the (very considerable) pleasure of this almost deliriously inventive, sharply imagined and ultimately affecting novel lies in the almost spookily vivid atmosphere and pathos that Atkinson manages to extract from all this Groundhog Day repetition. The premise – so pregnant with narrative opportunity that you wonder why no novelist has explored it before – is simple. What if we had a chance to live life "again and again, until we finally did get it right?"

In the early pages, this preoccupation with "getting it right" inspires quite dizzying heights of narrative suspense. So, Bridget the maid goes off to London on Armistice Day to celebrate and mingle with the crowds and returns late that night and, regaling them all with her stories, unwittingly – and fatally – infects Ursula and her siblings with Spanish flu.

A few pages later, the rerun: eight-year-old Ursula, hearing Bridget come back from London and feeling "a great dread, as if something truly treacherous were about to happen" stays in bed and doesn't go downstairs to hear the stories. And she lives. Several versions later however, Ursula, now troubled by an increasingly powerful sense of deja vu, does everything she can to stop Bridget going to London, including pushing her down the stairs (it works, Bridget stays). And then, in an almost comically chilling coda, Bridget, having felt "hands shoving me in the back… like the hands of a little ghost child" falls and sprains her ankle – only to hobble off to London (and her fate, their fate) regardless.

These virtually identical, yet subtly different versions of the same events feel both poignant and electric to read. Atkinson's knack for retelling – what to repeat, what to change, what to leave out – is satisfyingly faultless. Most of all, though, there's an odd exhilaration in the sheer number and the build-up – like one of those old childhood clapping songs that go faster and faster until you fall down, breathless and laughing.

Meanwhile, Ursula's continuing premonitions compel her parents to send her off to see a psychiatrist keen to talk reincarnation, but Atkinson wisely doesn't take this too far. Too much probing and explanation would deaden the novel's natural vivacity. Instead, we watch as the girl grows up to continue to grapple with circumstance: making choices, taking chances, getting it wrong and right, though, of course, never really all that right.

At 16, raped and pregnant by a friend of her brother's, she undergoes a backstreet abortion. But in a euphoric replay, she rebuffs the rapist and continues on, strong and undamaged. There's a grimly convincing episode where she endures – and escapes – a violent marriage. And a slightly less convincing one, where she ends up in prewar Berlin, married to a German and hobnobbing with Adolf and Eva.

In fact, if the novel has a downside, it's that the Berlin episode turns out to be crucial to the plot and, though I'll admit Atkinson wraps everything up with elan, I wasn't sure I really cared. And of course, if anything can happen – if people can die one minute and come back to life a couple of pages later – then catastrophes such as death lose a lot of their currency.

But Atkinson has done her research and then, as novelists should but rarely do, lit a rocket of her own under it. The scenes set in Blitz-stricken London will stay with me forever, especially the description of the dead man whose "body came apart like a Christmas cracker".

Her real strength, though, lies in her people – fathers, brothers, sisters, aunts. This novel is constantly acute and real and touching about familial and (especially) sibling love. Impressively – and unusually – some of her most engaging and best-realised characters are the good, kind, decent ones. Not only that but (a sure sign of heart in a novel) her dogs are great.

Best of all, Atkinson has written something that amounts to so much more than the sum of its (very many) parts. It almost seems to imply that there are new and mysterious things to feel and say about the nature of life and death, the passing of time, fate and possibility. When the baby Ursula, lying outdoors in her pram, sees winter come again and realises she "recognised it from the first time around", you catch your breath. And you don't really get it back until the very last page of this magnificently tender and humane novel.

Julie Myerson's new novel, The Quickening, is published on 28 March

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REVIEW: Life After Life by Kate Atkinson

My aunt lent me this book; she and I do not usually have the same literary tastes, hers tilting strongly in favor of endless novels of the Tudor court (I think she could name the kings and queens of England, and most of their relatives, in her sleep). Life After Life was something a bit different for her, as it was for me.

In February 1910, in a modest English country home called Fox Corner, a baby is born early. The doctor hasn’t arrived, due to a snowstorm raging outside. The child’s father is away on family business. The child’s mother, Sylvie Todd, has only the family maid, Bridget (who is all of 14, and new to the position), to rely upon. The child, a girl, comes too quickly, with the umbilical cord wrapped around her neck, and dies before she can draw her first breath:

The little heart. A helpless little heart beating wildly. Stopped suddenly like a bird dropped from the sky. A single shot. Darkness fell.

In February 1910, Dr. Fellowes arrives at Fox Corner just in time to save the child later christened Ursula Todd from dying at birth. He’s able to make the trip just before the roads close due to bad weather. It’s a good thing that he’s there, as Ursula is born with her umbilical cord wrapped around her neck. But Ursula is saved and thrives until June 1914, when on a family holiday, she drowns at the beach.

In February 1910, Ursula Todd is born. She grows up to be a vigorous and happy child, despite the fact that she’s almost lost at birth (the umbilical cord wrapped around her neck) and again is rescued from drowning at four while on family holiday. An amateur painter who has set up his easel on the beach notices Ursula in the water and saves her.

Life After Life poses the question, “What if we had a chance to do it again and again, until we finally did get it right? Wouldn’t that be wonderful?” Ursula does have that chance, though I’m not sure she finds it that wonderful; she experiences a fair amount of suffering, usually before dying an ignominious death.

The book spans the bulk of the 20th century, focusing particularly on Ursula’s growing-up years (marked by the Great War and the subsequent influenza epidemic) and the horrors of the London Blitz during World War II. The latter calamity takes Ursula several tries to live through intact (and honestly she never really seems quite alright, afterward). The blitz is vividly and grimly brought to life, almost too much so for me; it’s heavy stuff.

I want to be clear; Life After Life is not a romance. Ursula has various relationships in her sundry lives, but most of them are not particularly romantic – an abusive marriage, an adulterous affair, another marriage to an ambitious Nazi, some hasty and furtive couplings performed in the shadows of war. Ursula is not particularly romantic minded, at least not after about age 16, an age at which she has vague romantic longings for (and in one lifetime, a bit of a secret romance with) a neighbor boy. (Her mother would not approve; the boy is Jewish.)

Despite the lack of romance, the book that Life After Life vaguely reminded me of was The Time Traveler’s Wife . I almost added a “time travel” tag to this review, though Ursula does not, strictly speaking, time travel. But her repeated “do-overs” do in essence give her some of the chances that a time-traveler might have, even if she’s not always fully aware of them.

That said, there is a sense that as Ursula goes through her incarnations, she’s trying to get things “right,” particularly later on, as she becomes more aware, at least on some level, that she’s lived this all before. The blurbs I’ve read for the book often suggest that “getting it right” might mean stopping Hitler in his rise to power, and the book does play with that idea. But it’s not the driving force of the story: most often “getting it right” just means not dying the way she died in the previous incarnation; in one case it means avoiding a disastrous assault that ruins her life and leads indirectly to her death several years later.

One of the things I wondered about  (because a book like this seems suited for being thought over and picked apart) was the fact that in each life, it appears that Ursula gets a little further. She manages to avoid or prevent whatever series of events resulted in her life ending the previous time. Sometimes this means trying to change the actions of others, as when she tries repeatedly to stop Bridget from going to London with her sweetheart for end-of-war celebrations that ultimately introduce the deadly 1918 influenza into the Todd household.

This makes a certain amount of sense (given that we know Ursula is on some level aware of her previous lives), except when you take into account her first death, over which she had no control (you could argue the same for the drowning, though at least then she was a sentient being and may have done something just slightly different in order to capture the attention of her rescuer). So what I wondered was: how in control is Ursula of her own destiny?

I found Ursula’s consciousness of her past lives fascinating. Often she’s just nagged by a strong sense of deja vu; at other times, memories pop up as fully formed thoughts. In one scene, late in the book, Ursula is seeing (for the first time in this incarnation) the psychiatrist she is sent to by her parents, who are concerned about her strange behavior. Without thinking, she asks Dr. Kellet about the absence of a picture of his son Guy, killed in World War I, which she expects to see in his office. He replies, “Who is Guy?” which presents the intriguing possibility that as Ursula’s life changes with each incarnation, so do the lives of others. Whether these changes are incidental or somehow affected by Ursula was unclear to me (I mean, obviously Ursula doesn’t control the universe, nor is she at the center of it). Late in the book a beloved character thought shot down in the war turns up alive, which hadn’t been the case in previous lives (those where she had gotten past the end of WWII). I thought perhaps Ursula had let herself die in order to come to an incarnation where the other character did live, but I couldn’t figure out how (or if) she was supposed to have any control over his life or death, or she was just going to die as many times as it took for something to change.

Life after Life is richly populated with well-drawn secondary characters: Ursula’s mother Sylvie, not terribly maternal and vaguely dissatisfied with life; her father, Hugh, who first appears through Sylvie’s eyes as a bit bumbling and bourgeoisie (Sylvie’s family fortunes fell after her father died unexpectedly), but who ultimately comes across in Ursula’s view as one of the kindest, wisest and gentlest characters in the book. Ursula is very close to her sister Pamela, a stalwart ally against their older brother Maurice, who is the most consistently unlikable character, rude and self-important from boyhood through middle age. Ursula’s feckless Aunt Izzie is a vibrant character – she does swoop in and rescue Ursula a couple of times, but mostly serves as an object lesson on living irresponsibly and landing on your feet.

Life after Life is a serious book, but it’s leavened by a particular, droll British sense of humor throughout. It was fun to see some of the bits and motifs that recurred through each life, such as the less-than-stellar veal a la russe that the Todd’s cook, Mrs. Glover, insists on serving to the family.

I am in the strange position of recommending this book while still kind of warning off traditional romance readers. Not that I’d discourage anyone from reading Life after Life ; perhaps it’s just that it has a very slightly downbeat quality for me that I think makes it unromantic in both the smaller and larger senses. Still, it’s engrossing and original, and my grade is an A-.

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has been an avid if often frustrated romance reader for the past 15 years. In that time she's read a lot of good romances, a few great ones, and, unfortunately, a whole lot of dreck. Many of her favorite authors (Ivory, Kinsale, Gaffney, Williamson, Ibbotson) have moved onto other genres or produce new books only rarely, so she's had to expand her horizons a bit. Newer authors she enjoys include Julie Ann Long, Megan Hart and J.R. Ward, and she eagerly anticipates each new Sookie Stackhouse novel. Strong prose and characterization go a long way with her, though if they are combined with an unusual plot or setting, all the better. When she's not reading romance she can usually be found reading historical non-fiction.

Great review, Jennie! I think I am going to try this one. If this is the same Kate Atkinson that wrote the Jackson Brodie novels, her writing style really works for me. Her characters aren’t always totally likeable, but they are presented with a kind of dry wit.

By the way, if you haven’t read them, I highly recommend the Jackson Brodie books. I think there are four, starting with “Case Histories”. They are mysteries, but character studies as well. If you liked Atkinson’s voice in the book you reviewed, you will probably like it in these books too (if you haven’t already read them…)

That is one of the many things I enjoy about reading DA- the willingness to break out and say “hey, it isn’t romance but here is why I think you might like it”. Thanks for the great review- well done.

Yes, this is the same Kate Atkinson who wrote the Jackson Brodie mysteries. I recently discovered these books and have been recommending them to everyone since. There’s also a BBC miniseries starring Jason Isaacs. For once I think they got exactly the right actor to embody the hero as described on the page.

I read this for book club a couple of months ago. I didn’t love it because there wasn’t an overarching “right life”, I think. I did enjoy reading it but I strongly prefer definitive endings and the energizer-bunny style just didn’t do it for me. The lack of a real ending took away from my enjoyment. Most of the other ladies in the book club felt the same. But your review makes me wish I had liked it more.

I love Kate Atkinson, and this is one of her better books. I second the BBC TV series recommendation. Jason Isaacs is brilliant as Brodie.

I love the Jackson Brodie series, although at times it is a little depressing for me. Kate Atkinson’s other books don’t work so well for me, so I’ve been hesitant to try this one because it so heavily relies on a concept which appears, without reading the book, to be tediously repetitive–for obvious reason. But I’ll read a sample and see, because I do like the Brodie books.

Thanks for the review!

Also a Jackson Brodie fan. I’ve really been dithering for awhile about whether to get Started Early, Took My Dog (leaning towards no). I hadn’t heard of this particular Atkinson book before, but your review sounds intriguing–especially that Ursula has knowledge of her multiple paths. I’m going to give this one a try.

I also loved the BBC Jackson Brodie series. And Jason Isaacs was perfectly cast, as was Brodie’s sweet daughter.

One of my favorite books of 2013! The characters stayed with me for a long time after I finished reading it.

@ JacquiC : I knew she had written other books but I didn’t know that she had a series of mysteries; I will definitely check those out – thanks!

(And I’m even more excited knowing there is a series based on them starring Jason Isaacs!)

@ Jae Lee : I definitely know what you mean – I think I have to be in the right mood to deal with the ambiguity. I think the lack of a “right life” was part of the point. If it had ended with one of the grimmer possibilities I probably would have thrown the book across the room. But I felt like ending was actually rather hopeful.

@Kate Hewitt – I do think some of the reviews I read complained of repetitiveness, though I think Atkinson does a good job of not covering the same ground the same way each time. Though the veal a la russe remains a constant, there are other details that change even in Ursula’s childhood, and those were interesting to read about. I must admit that early on there was a certain tension inherent in seeing how Ursula would buy the farm this time.

I adore Kate Atkinson’s books so I had this one on preorder last spring and read it all in one go the day it came out. I’ve actually bought copies to give to people as CHristmas gifts. But you’re right this definitely isn’t a romance novel. If you like this one though the novel she wrote before it — Behind the Scenes at the Museum– is also really good.

I am an unashamed Kate Atkinson worshiper. I was fortunate enough to get a signed copy for this, and I haven’t been able to bring myself to read it’s lovely pristine pages, so I’m waiting on it coming out in paperback. I’ve read everything else she’s written though, and second all the love for Jackson Brodie, but would also highly recommend Behind the Scenes at the Museum. She gets a lot of flack for her style, but for me her prose is a lovely thing, and her fine sense of irony that underpins almost everything she writes is so often missed. Yes, I’m a genuine fan girl, and not just because she’s a fellow Scot. So glad that you’ve reviewed her here.

I had been looking at this book for a while, thank you! I need something smart right now after reading the book which felt like a very stupid read :-).

Once I realized what was going on, I enjoyed this book immensely. The author offers a strong sense of place and time and I’m a particular fan of novels set in WWI and WWII. Good balance of narrative with dialogue, the pace did not lag despite returning to past scenarios. The Nazi connection did not work for me but otherwise a great read.

@ M.K. Tod : I agree that the Nazi subplot could have been skipped entirely. I found it interesting in parts but the Hitler connection was too much of a stretch.

What a well-written, intelligent review. I just finished this book today and was looking around to see what others had said about it. I like your observation about how the changes in the other characters’ lives, like Dr. Kellet’s son, Guy. I knew that other characters’ lives were changing based on other versions of Ursula’s life, but the Dr. Kellet one particularly stuck out to me, too, perhaps because his lost son Guy was one of the main foundations of his character.

Thanks for the insights! A pleasure to read. Andria http://www.militaryspousebookreview.wordpress.com

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Reviews of Life After Life by Kate Atkinson

Summary | Excerpt | Reading Guide | Reviews | Beyond the book | Read-Alikes | Genres & Themes | Author Bio

Life After Life

by Kate Atkinson

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• Literary Fiction
• UK (Britain) & Ireland
• 20th Century (multiple decades)
• Generational Sagas
• Magical Realism
• War Related

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Book Summary

What if you could live again and again, until you got it right? On a cold and snowy night in 1910, Ursula Todd is born to an English banker and his wife. She dies before she can draw her first breath. On that same cold and snowy night, Ursula Todd is born, lets out a lusty wail, and embarks upon a life that will be, to say the least, unusual. For as she grows, she also dies, repeatedly, in a variety of ways, while the young century marches on towards its second cataclysmic world war. Does Ursula's apparently infinite number of lives give her the power to save the world from its inevitable destiny? And if she can - will she? Darkly comic, startlingly poignant, and utterly original - this is Kate Atkinson at her absolute best.

Be Ye Men of Valor

November 1930 A fug of tobacco smoke and damp clammy air hit her as she entered the café. She had come in from the rain and drops of water still trembled like delicate dew on the fur coats of some of the women inside. A regiment of white-aproned waiters rushed around at tempo, serving the needs of the Münchner  at leisure—coffee, cake and gossip. He was at a table at the far end of the room, surrounded by the usual cohorts and toadies. There was a woman she had never seen before—a permed, platinum blonde with heavy makeup—an actress by the look of her. The blond lit a cigarette, making a phallic performance out of it. Everyone knew that he preferred his women demure and whole-some, Bavarian preferably. All those dirndls and knee-socks, God help us. The table was laden.  Bienenstich, Gugelhupf, Käsekuchen . He was eating a slice of  Kirschtorte . He loved his cakes. No wonder he looked so pasty, she was ...

Please be aware that this discussion guide will contain spoilers!

• Ursula Todd gets to live out many different realities, something that's impossible in real life. Though there is an array of possibilities that form Ursula's alternate histories, do you think any and all futures are possible in Ursula's world, or are there certain parameters within which each life is lived?
• As time goes on, Ursula learns more about her ability to restart her life—and she often changes course accordingly, but she doesn't always correct things. Why not? Do you think Ursula ever becomes completely conscious of her ability to relive and redo her lives? If so, at what point in the story do you think that happens? And what purpose do you think she sets for herself once she figures it out?
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Reviewing a book with a divided mind is not easy. Do I say that the writing here is of the highest quality, that the settings are vivid? Yes. That even the complex structure and repetition serve a purpose? Yes, again. But will I also be transparent enough to say that the story wearied me, that it began to overwhelm? I must... continued

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Winner of the 2020 BookBrowse Fiction Award In the vein of The Time Traveler's Wife and Life After Life , The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue is New York Times bestselling author V. E. Schwab's genre-defying tour de force.

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Submitting a book for review, write the editor, you are here:, life after life.

Ursula Todd, the heroine of Kate Atkinson's LIFE AFTER LIFE, is born and dies more than a dozen times in the novel. She is always born on February 11, 1910, in the midst of a crippling snowstorm. Sometimes she dies right afterwards, due to the umbilical cord wrapped around her neck. Or she lives to a relatively advanced age, surviving two world wars and a host of other hazards.

Ursula, a perceptive young woman who has always been a bit of an observer --- the middle child in her bustling household --- eventually grows more and more aware of her bizarre life story/ies. Even if she doesn't actively remember the lives that have preceded the one she's living now, she still suffers from a tremendous feeling of déjà vu, so strong and upsetting at times that her mother takes her to a Buddhist therapist, who offers sympathy if not precisely answers.

"[Atkinson] has built on the sprawling, multi-dimensional characteristics of her detective fiction in this novel...as she gradually introduces readers not only to Ursula's vivid inner life but also to the dozens of people whose lives she touches, time after time. LIFE AFTER LIFE is Kate Atkinson at her brilliantly inventive best."

At times, Ursula's growing self-awareness can lead to moments of black humor; when she and her family members keep dying of Spanish flu, for example, young Ursula grows increasingly desperate (if not exactly sophisticated) in her efforts to prevent this outcome from happening in perpetuity. Elsewhere, though, Ursula eventually develops --- whether she is aware of it or not --- the ability to recognize the patterns not only of her own life but of the world in which she has grown up again and again.

Ursula is born into a country house, a life of privilege. Her father fights in the Great War, and her older brother is (regardless of which life she’s living) an unlikable, distant, even sometimes cruel young man. Ursula is alternately fascinated and embarrassed by her father's younger sister, whose rising and falling fortunes sometimes seem to mimic Ursula's own. As a young woman coming of age in the volatile interwar period, Ursula is vulnerable to any number of obstacles --- rape, unwanted pregnancy, illegal abortion, harassment, despair, inadequate education --- all of which she encounters on one or more of her journeys through history.

But Ursula has an advantage that none of the rest of us has --- she can learn from her mistakes and those of her friends, family and acquaintances. "What if we had a chance to do it again and again," her younger brother Teddy asks Ursula at one point, "until we finally did get it right?" "I think it would be exhausting," replies Ursula, and she's right --- particularly as she relives the harrowing bombings of World War II on both the German and British sides of the war, forced to confront enough horrors for dozens of lifetimes. Eventually, though, Ursula realizes that she just might be able not only to witness history but also to reshape the madness around her, to give not only herself but also countless others another chance at life. "This is love," Ursula reflects as she embarks on one more chance to improve the world, "And the practice of it makes it perfect."

Kate Atkinson, who won the Whitbread Award for her debut novel, BEHIND THE SCENES AT THE MUSEUM, has taken a bit of a break from literary fiction over the past several years to write a series of innovative and unusual detective novels. With LIFE AFTER LIFE, she returns to some of the considerations of her earlier fiction, particularly about the inner life of children and about how wars and the deaths of children affect families and women in particular. But she has built on the sprawling, multi-dimensional characteristics of her detective fiction in this novel as well, as she gradually introduces readers not only to Ursula's vivid inner life but also to the dozens of people whose lives she touches, time after time. LIFE AFTER LIFE is Kate Atkinson at her brilliantly inventive best.

Reviewed by Norah Piehl on April 5, 2013

Life After Life by Kate Atkinson

• Publication Date: April 2, 2013
• Genres: Fiction , Historical Fiction
• Hardcover: 544 pages
• Publisher: Reagan Arthur Books
• ISBN-10: 0316176486
• ISBN-13: 9780316176484

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Review: Life After Life, By Kate Atkinson

The heroine of this elegant experimental novel gets not one, but several chances to alter the course of history, article bookmarked.

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Aficionados of Kate Atkinson's novels – this is the eighth – will tell you that she writes two sorts: the "literary" kind, exemplified by her Whitbread Prize-winning debut Behind the Scenes at the Museum , and the Jackson Brodie crime thrillers. In reality, the distinction is superfluous. Atkinson is a literary writer who likes experimenting with different forms, and her books appeal to a huge audience, full stop. However, for those still keen on these discriminations, Life After Life is one of the "literary" ones. As with the Brodies, Atkinson steers with a light touch, despite the grimness of the subject matter.

"What if we had the chance to do it again and again … until we finally get it right?" asks one of the characters near the end. Life after Life is about being given that chance. In the opening scene, it's 1930. A young woman named Ursula enters a coffee shop in Germany and shoots a man she addresses as "Führer". The episode ends with the words: "Darkness fell." Next, we're back in 1910, with a snowstorm raging outside. A baby girl is born, and, in the absence of medical intervention, dies. Again, those words: "Darkness fell". The scene is replayed, but this time the doctor makes it through the snow and baby Ursula lives. The child thrives until her fifth summer, when she drowns on a Cornish beach. Darkness falls again, and we're sent back to 1910. Are you getting the idea? In Ursula's next chance at doing it right, an artist rescues her from the waves, and darkness does not fall again until 1915, when she slips from a bedroom window while trying to rescue a doll ….

By this time, the reader may wonder whether he or she hasn't ended up in a game of snakes and ladders played on the grand scale. Some of the narrative tension derives from seeing how long Ursula will last each time – she's very accident prone – but in the meantime there's plenty else going on. Each time an event is revisited, it's described differently, from another character's viewpoint, or with extra context, or slight changes to the circumstances, and it gradually dawns on you that the author is up to something more subtle and complex than mere writerly legerdemain.

Overall, it's safe to say that the early narrative follows the following course: Ursula is the third child of Sylvie and Hugh Todd, brought up in an idyllic English upper-middle-class country home, sister to the soulless and pragmatic Maurice and jolly-hockey-sticks Pamela. She's an engaging girl, but quirky, with a tendency to fits of what her despairing mother calls "déjà-vu". Teddy, the sunny family darling, arrives soon after, then, finally, Jimmy, conceived after Hugh's return from Flanders Fields. Swelling the dramatis personae are disreputable Aunt Izzie – ripe to play a pivotal role in many of Ursula's crises – Mrs Glover the dour cook, and Bridget, the plain-faced Irish maidservant.

Beyond this basic set up, all bets are off. Bridget and Teddy may or may not die of Spanish flu, Ursula this time returning to Square One in order to save them, rather than because she's died herself. On her 16th birthday, Ursula may or may not be raped by a university pal of Maurice's, causing her life to decline to a particularly nasty dead end. Or does she instead throw off the rapist, go to college and visit Germany where she befriends Eva Braun?

Whatever the outcome of individual strands, the novel pushes on towards its heartland: the London Blitz. Ursula works for the War Office, has an on-off affair with an older ex-Navy officer, does or doesn't become an ARP warden. Some of the most vivid scenes concern the work of the rescue teams as, with bombs falling and buildings collapsing around them, they pursue their grim agenda. Again and again, Ursula experiences one particularly traumatic event: a direct hit on a dozen people sheltering in a cellar in Argyll Road in November 1940. The horror is drummed in so hard that it becomes apparent where the logic of the novel will lead: the war should not have been allowed to happen.

The novels of Kate Atkinson habitually shuffle past and present, but Life After Life takes the shuffling to such extremes that the reader has to hold on to his hat. It's more than a storytelling device. Ursula and her therapist discuss theories of time. He tells her that it is circular, but she claims that it's a palimpsest. The writer has a further purpose. Elsewhere, Atkinson is quoted as saying: "I'm very interested in the moral path, doing the right thing." It's impossible not to be sympathetic toward Ursula, who yearns to save the people she loves and has been blessed – or cursed – with the ability to do it.

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Book review: Life After Life by Kate Atkinson

The story of a woman blessed (or cursed) to live her life over and over again draws on life's dizzying potential and primal anxieties.

By Kate Atkinson. Reagan Arthur Books, $28.

Kate Atkinson’s new novel opens with a jarring display of violence. The year is 1930; Ursula Todd approaches Adolf Hitler with a gun and fires. However, she herself is killed—and the narrative returns to the moment of Ursula’s birth, in 1910. This time, though, she is stillborn. The novel then repeats the event, but now Ursula’s birth yields jubilation rather than sorrow. As Ursula is born and dies again and again, different lurking dangers present themselves: riptides, an influenza epidemic, the Blitz. Slowly, Ursula becomes aware of her unique existence; from lifetime to lifetime, she endeavors to discover the reasons behind this condition. Some of Ursula’s lives are brutally short. Sometimes she is able to effect change within her own life via premonitions; in others, a character new to the narrative alters Ursula’s history or our own. Certain timelines, e.g., one in which Ursula is trapped in a nightmarish marriage with a violent academic, land with a sickening power. Other passages evoke Patrick Hamilton’s sharply drawn novels of prewar London; Atkinson’s neatly drawn supporting characters and minor conflicts could power a suite of chamber dramas.

The surreal chronology of Life After Life has its antecedents: Ken Grimwood’s 1987 novel Replay and Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five use disjointed chronology to explore the dizzying potential within a human life. At the core of Atkinson’s book is a very primal anxiety: missing out on those lives we imagine but never get the chance to live. Ursula Todd is blessed (or cursed) to circumvent this, but the weight of her situation—in which the best-laid plans might take repeated lifetimes to pull off—is impossibly saddening, a series of long games in which mortality is both a punishment and an obstacle to be dodged. At one point, the author notes that Ursula was “as happy as was possible in this life.” It’s a qualification that takes on more power, as Atkinson’s variations on histories political and familial march on, delicate bonds unravel, and buildings and lives crumble without warning.

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Home / Books / Life After Life

Life After Life

Winner of the Costa Novel Award and now a BBC TV series

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.

“What if we had a chance to do it again and again, until we finally did get it right? Wouldn’t that be wonderful?”

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Promotional video for Life After Life by Kate Atkinson

• An audio excerpt from Life After Life read by Fenella Woolgar

Author’s note

Discover the story behind the story of Life after Life – how the book came to be, the original inspiration, and sources.

Please note: This does contain spoilers so if you haven’t yet read the book, then you might prefer to do this first.

“I was born at the end of 1951 and grew up feeling that had I just missed the Second World War, that something terrible and tremendous had occurred and I would never know it. Looking back this strikes me as odd for as a child I was never aware of those around me talking about it. It was almost as though it had never happened, for although my family experienced the war they rarely mentioned it. It’s only recently I’ve come to realize – and understand – that once it was over and people faced the grim reality of the peace, all they wanted to do was to forget – not just the destruction wrought on us but the greater destruction that we rained down on Europe. We had reduced Germany to rubble and we were not necessarily proud of that, nor of the endless moral compromise that war necessitates. People move on, history remains…”

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Reading guide and discussion questions for Life After Life

Reading guide and discussion questions for Life After Life from Litlovers.com

Kate Atkinson’s new novel is a box of delights. Ingenious in construction, indefatigably entertaining, it grips the readers imagination on the first page and never lets go. If you wish to be moved and astonished, read it. And if you want to give a dazzling present, buy it for your friends.

Hilary Mantel, author of The Mirror and the Light

There aren’t enough breathless adjectives to describe Life After Life : Dazzling, witty, moving, joyful, mournful, profound. Wildly inventive, deeply felt. Hilarious. Humane. Simply put: it’s ONE OF THE BEST NOVELS I’VE READ THIS CENTURY.

Gillian Flynn, No.1 New York Times author of Gone Girl and Sharp Objects

Truly brilliant…Think of Audrey Niffenegger’s The TimeTraveler’s Wife or David Nicholl’s One Day…[or] Martin Amis’s Times Arrow, his rewinding of the Holocaust that was shortlisted for the Booker. Life After Life should have the popular success of the former and deserves to win prizes, too. It has that kind of thrill to it, of an already much-loved novelist taking a leap, and breaking through to the next level…This is a rare book that you want, Ursula-like, to start again the minute you have finished.

Helen Rumbelow, The Times

What makes Atkinson an exceptional writer and this is her most ambitious and most gripping work to date is that she does so with an emotional delicacy and understanding that transcend experiment or playfulness. Life After Life gives us a heroine whose fictional underpinning is permanently exposed, whose artificial status is never in doubt; and yet one who feels painfully, horribly real to us.

Alex Clark, Guardian

Merging family saga with a fluid sense of time and an extraordinarily vivid sense of history at its most human level. A dizzying and dazzling tour de force.

Amber Pearson, Daily Mail

Deliriously inventive, sharply imagined and ultimately affecting…The scenes set in Blitz-stricken London will stay with me forever…Atkinson has written something that amounts to so much more than the sum of its (very many) parts. It almost seems to imply that there are new and mysterious things to feel and say about the nature of life and death, the passing of time, fate and possibility…[a]magnificently tender and humane novel.

Julie Myerson, Observer

Brilliant…more than just a terrific story about the impact of one existence on another. Atkinson can knock the socks off any rival in terms of skill and style…The tour de force of the book, though, is Atkinson’s recreation of the Blitz…unputdownable.

Evening Standard

Absolutely brilliant…it reminded me a bit of her first book Behind the Scenes at the Museum , which is one of my most favourite books ever.

Marian Keyes (Email newsletter)

Stunned with tiredness thanks to Kate Atkinson’s Life After Life . Couldn’t stop reading. Terrific novel, may be her best yet. So enthralling, so well written, so beautifully constructed. Really, I can’t fault it. Will be one of my books of the year.

Val McDermid (Twitter)

World events, reimagined characters and second chances told with warmth, wit and consummate skill.

Fanny Blake, Woman & Home

Startlingly brilliant…endlessly rich.

James Walton, Reader's Digest

Life After Life is to be applauded for its inventiveness, and for reminding us of lives vanished without trace or memory in the waste and monstrosity of war.

Literary Review

Atkinson, like Audrey Niffenegger before her with the similarly ambitious The Time Traveller’s Wife, is a confident enough writer to bear her high concept along well above water level.

Atkinson’s great skill is in portraying the exquisite tapestry of [life] with warmth, humour and immense humanity.

Yorkshire Post

One of the most innovative, pacy plots of any recent novel.

Psychologies Magazine

Playful, intelligent and beguiling…Astoundingly accomplished.

Marie Claire

A profound read that finds light in the darkest times.

Glamour Magazine

If you enjoyed The Time Traveller’s Wife, you will love this inventive fantasy from the author of the Jackson Brodie series…marvel at Atkinson’s skill in carrying off this absorbing feat of imagination.

Sunday Mirror

Atkinson’s achievement is to convince the reader that being disorientated about exactly what has happened so far is acceptable and enjoyable…deftly constructed…The innovative narrative structure of Life After Life reasserts the best there is to hope for in human existence.

Times Literary Supplement

Hilary Mantel, a rival for the Women’s Prize, once said that Atkinson “delivers to the populace its jokes and its tragedies as efficiently as Dickens once delivered his, though Atkinson has a game-plan more sophisticated than Dickens’s”. This is Atkinson’s best book to date, and she is as worthy as Mantel for the Prize.

Daily Telegraph

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Life After Life, BBC2, review: An overcomplicated Kate Atkinson adaptation

The sedate drama follows ursula, a child who dies in a multitude of ways only to come back to life.

Kate Atkinson’s ambitious and acclaimed 2013 novel Life After Life is a high-concept tale whose female protagonist, Ursula Todd, dies multiple times before being born again with a growing sense of déjà vu.

The theme was hammered home in the opening scene of the BBC’s four-part adaptation, as an adult Ursula (played by Thomasin McKenzie from The Power of the Dog ) prepared to say goodbye to her brother Teddy (Sean Delaney) as he left to join the wartime RAF.

“What would it be like if we could come back and live all over again and again and again?” asked Teddy.

To answer that, we spooled back to their upper-middle-class household in 1910 Buckinghamshire, where Ursula was strangled at birth by her umbilical cord.

Having been reborn, she was later drowned at sea, while, after a further resurrection, she fell to her death from an upstairs window. And so on, through to a fatal dose of Spanish Flu.

The repeated doubling back on itself was like a high-minded Groundhog Day (or a more sedate version of Netflix’s Russian Doll ), encompassing Britain in the first half of the 20th century. Lesley Manville’s narration was unfortunately reminiscent of Brenda Strong’s voiceover in Desperate Housewives . Not that the guidance was entirely unwelcome, helping to navigate the story’s frequent toing and froing.

These rewinds could have been off-putting, but the handsome production was bolstered by strong performances. The first episode eventually overcame its tricky structure to suggest that there might yet be life in Life After Life .

Life After Life continues on Tuesday 26 April at 9pm on BBC Two. All episodes are streaming on BBC iPlayer now.

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Life After Life by Kate Atkinson

• Publication Date: April 2, 2013
• Genres: Fiction , Historical Fiction
• Hardcover: 544 pages
• Publisher: Reagan Arthur Books
• ISBN-10: 0316176486
• ISBN-13: 9780316176484
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