In 'Life After Life' by Kate Atkinson, the protagonist Ursula Todd experiences multiple lives, each starting with her birth in 1910 and ending with her death. She navigates through different scenarios, making various choices that lead to alternate outcomes. The novel explores themes of reincarnation, fate, and the impact of individual decisions on one's life path. Through Ursula's repeated lives, the story delves into historical events like World War I and II, showcasing how small changes can have significant consequences. Atkinson's writing style weaves together elements of mystery, drama, and introspection, inviting readers to ponder the complexities of life and the concept of second chances.
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Sensitive Topics/Content Warnings
The book contains themes of death, war, abuse, rape, and mental illness, which may be triggering for some readers.
From The Publisher:
'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, bestselling author of GONE GIRL
'A box of delights. Ingenious in construction, indefatigably entertaining, it grips the reader's imagination on the first page and never lets go.' HILARY MANTEL, author of THE MIRROR AND THE LIGHT
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.
'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' Daily Mail
'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.' Mirian Keyes, author of Grown Ups
'Truly brilliant...Think of Audrey Niffenegger's The Time Traveler's Wife or David Nicholl's One Day...[or] Martin Amis's Times Arrow.... This is a rare book that you want to start again the minute you have finished.' The Times
Ratings (68)
Incredible (10) | |
Loved It (26) | |
Liked It (22) | |
It Was OK (6) | |
Did Not Like (3) | |
Hated It (1) |
Reader Stats (172):
Read It (68) | |
Want To Read (75) | |
Did Not Finish (2) | |
Not Interested (27) |
3 comment(s)
Life after life is a story where our heroin, Ursula gets chances to make her life correct again and again. She dies and is born again. The narration doesn't start from the starting every time, but certain point where Ursula is to avoid her last mistake and continues till the next one. She tries to set her mistakes right to protect herself and sometimes for her family. Every time she died, i was like, Oh God not again, why is she dying so easily !!!
A unique concept and one which I wish was true in my life too.The climax seems a bit vague. We don't know definitely what has happened or will it be escaped again through "re-incarnation" of Ursula. There is war, there is sophisticated life, there is childhood , there are relations that are strained and bonded strongly. Kate Atkinson has written it well , as for a complex story-line, she has managed it well.
Plot writing
Very very interesting. This work by Raymond A Moody is approximately 40 years old in 2011. It was ground breaking at the time and to this day remains so. I have owned several copies of this great work. I loaned copies out several times, sadly never were they returned. My interest in this stems from the fact that I suffer from hypertension and sleep apnea. Both of these health conditions led to my experiencing near death and out of body experiences. I thought I was losing my mind until I read Raymond Moody's book "Life after Life". I have been investigating the phenomina for 40 years and haven't found a more accurate book on the topic anywhere, period. I know human personality survives death. I know there is reincarnation of human personality. This flies in the face of modern Christianity. It was not until I studied the life of Christ, I understood that reincarnation was taught and understood by early Christians and Jesus Christ. Reincarnation as a topic of theology was taken out of the cannodical Bible in the Sixth Century for many reasons, chief among them was the desire of the businessmen of the church to control adherents. Wealth was easier to extract from people who were taught only the permission of emmisaries of Christ could relieve sin upon physical death. Jesus said in several places in the New Testament, "You must be born again." That is the only vestage of the original teaching which survives. Though this has nothing to do with the subjects covered in "Life After Life", it may help you understand that survival of human personality is a FACT long known but suppresed. I am not interested in a religious philosophy, but several of them say the same thing; particularly Hinduism. I am interested in convincing you, who may be facing death in the immediate future, there is nothing to fear. Death is as natural a transition as infancy to pubescence and pubesence to middle age, and middle age to geriatric age. If you need guidance to other sources, view "What the Bleep Do We Know" (Amazon and Netflix), "What the Bleep Do We Know, Down The Rabbit Hole" (Amazon and Netflix). I wish you well as our lives unfold into the great unknown which will one day be known by our Science if we fix our minds on being open mindes.
What can you read after
Life After Life?
About the Author:
Kate Atkinson is one of the world's foremost novelists. She won the Costa Book of the Year prize with her first novel, Behind the Scenes at the Museum. Her three critically lauded and prizewinning novels set around World War II are Life After Life, A God in Ruins (both winners of the Costa Novel Award), and Transcription. She was appointed MBE for services to literature in 2011. Her bestselling literary crime novels featuring former detective Jackson Brodie are Case Histories, One Good Turn, When Will There Be Good News? Started Early, Took My Dog and Big Sky. The Jackson Brodie novels became a BBC television series starring Jason Isaacs.
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