No
review
could
do justice
to Kate Atkinson's magnum opus. Life
after Life defies
description as it's grander and more imaginatively brilliant than
simple words can depict. Atkinson takes the many lives of Ursula Todd
and strings them together like graduated pearls on a necklace in her
novel of destiny and “what might have been.”
Ursula
Todd was born on a snowy 1910 evening in the English countryside and
she died before her first breath because the doctor couldn't get
there in time to save her BUT on the
very
next
page on
that same night the doctor did arrive and Ursula lived. She lived
only to die again, over and over again, in countless ways. Yet
she
lived again to save the world, to suffer immeasurable losses, to make
good
and bad
choices, to fall by chance into a Pandora's Box packed with
opportunities and crises, and throughout it all to mesmerize this
reader.
Ursula
should be an impossible character to reveal as she constantly changes
and doesn't
always suffer,
grow or learn from the consequences of what
she does or what's
done to her.
What
if
she really had killed Hitler in 1930 near the novel's beginning?
What if she'd taken an earlier
path home one
day?
These
and other questions make
the reader's mind spin at the beginning only to settle into the
unexpected rhythm of the book's
constant changes in time and place. Yes, it takes a few chapters to
enter that rhythm but once there it's
magical.
Ursula's
childhood home
with
a mother who epitomizes the old-fashioned sort who lives for her
children and a father who loves all of them and calls her “little
bear” should be idyllic yet bad things keep
happening there.
Their
home is called Fox Corners and a magnificent section titled “Like a
Fox in a Hole” shows a full cast of prey and predators. Rabbits
and foxes abound with rabbits even finding their way onto the book's
sumptuous blue endpapers. Atkinson's publisher sought out a William
Morris wallpaper for them and it turned out to be Atkinson's own
dining room wallpaper. Perhaps seeing it daily influenced her use of
the
creatures.
In
adulthood, Ursula works with a crew that goes in after bombings in
London's blitz and Atkinson is at her best in setting these
scenes.
In one incident Ursula and her companion were “both terribly down
in spirits” as one of their compatriots, a bank manager had been
killed by a delayed-action bomb and they attempted to move him:
Ursula took his shoulders and her
co-worker
his ankles and “Mr.
Palmer's body came apart like a Christmas cracker.”
Ursula's
ruminations on war infuse the book with historical and cultural
references that set the primary theme of living as if there's no
tomorrow as in this conversation with her brother Teddy:
“And
the poor Germans, I doubt many of them are in favor of war. . . But
if we had lost the Great War and been burdened with great debt just
as the world's economy collapsed then perhaps we too would have been
a tinderbox awaiting the strike of a flint --”
“No
point in thinking,” she said briskly, “you just have to get on
with life. . . We only have one after all, we should try and do our
best. We can never get it right, but we must try.”
“What
if we had a chance to do it again and again,” Teddy said, “until
we finally did get it right? Wouldn't that be wonderful?”
“I
think it would be exhausting. I would quote Nietzsche at you but you
would probably thump me.”
“Probably,”
he said amiably. “He's a Nazi, isn't he?”
If
Atkinson were a less gifted writer, we would want to “thump” her
for her literary conceits but they work so well that the reader
relishes them as an alternate reality.
Summing
it Up: Read Atkinson's magnum opus for the splendid writing and to
enter a brilliant world that will take you through the first half of
the twentieth century and make you contemplate life
if there were second chances.
Think of this book as a necklace –
entirely circular with each bead telling a different story.
Rating:
5 stars
Category:
Fiction, Five Stars, Gourmet, Book Club
Publication
date: April 2, 2013
Author’s
Website: http://www.kateatkinson.co.uk/
Reading
Group Guide:
http://www.litlovers.com/reading-guides/13-fiction/9178-life-after-life-atkinson?start=3
What
Others are Saying:
Los
Angeles Times:
http://articles.latimes.com/2013/apr/05/entertainment/la-ca-jc-kate-atkinson-20130407
New
York Times:
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/28/books/review/life-after-life-by-kate-atkinson.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0
National
Public Radio:
http://www.npr.org/2013/04/02/175696606/in-life-after-life-caught-in-the-dangerous-machinery-of-history
Publishers
Weekly: http://www.publishersweekly.com/978-0-316-17648-4
