5 out of 5 stars
Life After Life reads like vintage literature, but it's also darn right fantastical with a bit of a time-travel angle thrown in. If Atkinson's approach doesn't click with you right away, you might hate it. It clicked with me, and I loved it. I also loved the time frame, the setting in England, France and Germany during WWI and II, and Atkinson's amazing story crafting.
Every time Ursula dies, it's like a reset button is pressed, and she starts over. As readers, we see these restarts from a variety of perspectives and from different moments in time, so it never gets tedious. Our heroic Ursula relives her whole life, from her birth in 1910 through and beyond WWII. It's a fascinating study of destiny vs. free will -- though Ursula has no idea she's being reincarnated as herself life after life. She does have premonitions and is haunted by feelings of déjà vu. Eventually, I think this starts to drive her a little mad.
At any rate, each life, the butterfly effect of her actions and decisions affect outcomes that range from tiny to absolutely life altering -- or ending. Atkinson's execution of this effect is fantastic, and her descriptions, in particular, of Germany's raids on England and the aftermath of Hitler's Blitzkrieg are both brilliant and horrifying.
But you really have to pay attention to the dates at the top of each chapter, because as readers, we're jumping around in time a lot. As for Ursula, she's plucky and hilarious, and she drops some bon motts that made me laugh out loud. Like our singular lives, the trajectory that the different versions of her lives take all contain happiness, sadness, triumph and tragedy -- in different amounts, but she never comes out unscathed -- it's definitely not a perfect system! You have to wonder if being re set is a gift or a curse. I think it's probably both.
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