Life After Life by Kate Atkinson
Imagine you're at a crossroads. You go left and you meet the love of your life. You go right and you get hit by a car. Now imagine that you stop to help a little old lady across the street. Because it took you longer than usual to cross, you're not standing underneath the tree on the other side when it's struck by lightning.
Random chances and random choices are at the heart of Kate Atkinson's new novel Life After Life, in which she shows us the many ways Ursula Todd's life could have spooled out, if only.
The story starts with a shocker: Ursula is stillborn because the doctor got held up by bad weather and couldn't get there in time to cut the umbilical cord around her neck. But never fear, a few pages later, history is rewritten, the doctor arrives in time, and Ursula survives. A few years later, she drowns at the beach, but in an alternate life, a bystander sees her and saves her. At the beginning, it's a little jarring to have people dead then suddenly alive again, but you get used to it. And Ursula does lead some very interesting lives, from her birth in 1910 to her retirement in the late 1960s. Ironically, she doesn't seem particularly happy in any of her lives in terms of career, romance, etc.
I did think the book was a little too long (nearly 530 pages). The section set during World War 2 had some interesting tangents--she's trapped in Germany during the war, she's hanging out with Eva Braun, she's killed in a bombing raid in London, she's on the rescue crew during the bombings. But it went on too long.
And I found the ending a little confusing: Was she really being reincarnated? (She does seem to have vague memories of other lives and premonitions about bad things about to happen.) Or is she crazy? We never really find out.
Worth reading because it's so thought provoking but I still prefer Started Early Took My Dog by the same author.
Random chances and random choices are at the heart of Kate Atkinson's new novel Life After Life, in which she shows us the many ways Ursula Todd's life could have spooled out, if only.
The story starts with a shocker: Ursula is stillborn because the doctor got held up by bad weather and couldn't get there in time to cut the umbilical cord around her neck. But never fear, a few pages later, history is rewritten, the doctor arrives in time, and Ursula survives. A few years later, she drowns at the beach, but in an alternate life, a bystander sees her and saves her. At the beginning, it's a little jarring to have people dead then suddenly alive again, but you get used to it. And Ursula does lead some very interesting lives, from her birth in 1910 to her retirement in the late 1960s. Ironically, she doesn't seem particularly happy in any of her lives in terms of career, romance, etc.
I did think the book was a little too long (nearly 530 pages). The section set during World War 2 had some interesting tangents--she's trapped in Germany during the war, she's hanging out with Eva Braun, she's killed in a bombing raid in London, she's on the rescue crew during the bombings. But it went on too long.
And I found the ending a little confusing: Was she really being reincarnated? (She does seem to have vague memories of other lives and premonitions about bad things about to happen.) Or is she crazy? We never really find out.
Worth reading because it's so thought provoking but I still prefer Started Early Took My Dog by the same author.
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