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3.81 AVERAGE
3.81 AVERAGE
adventurous
emotional
reflective
medium-paced
Imagine if you could go back and redo the big incidents of your life, the ones that led to accidents or tragedies or big irreversible mistakes of your life, and if you could just relive them, and yes relive your entire life too if you took the option, and you could make a smarter, better, more well-informed decision. How different the course of your life would be? How different your outcomes, the people in your life, and the places you end up in.
Well, Life after Life is a repetition of this very concept for the incredible LIVES of one Ursula Todd. I never liked Groundhog Day, and much as I like Bill Murray, I found the movie rather annoying. Oh not again! was my sentiment for seeing the same scene over and over, and yet I could appreciate the concept if not the particular events and settings and people. If you could turn back time, what would you do differently? It's not just an interesting concept, it is a massively complex one and it only works if you can do a great job with the execution of it, and Kate Atkinson does it remarkably well. She imagines all the horrible things that could have happened to Ursula, and in some lives, they befall her earlier than in other lives, all marked by the somber words: Darkness fell.
Atkinson is rich in her prose, elaborate in her descriptions, and remarkable in creating bonding with the reader - you and me. I had never heard of her until I found this book in the audio selection of Overdrive from the library, and I'm thrilled. She's a phenomenal novelist, with more than a little of Jane Austen in her. The settings of 20th century, the wars, England, Germany, and an upper class British family and the writing style all give me flashbacks to Jane Austen, with a 100 years of period gap.
I like Ursula so much and feel for her. I like reading stories where I like the protagonist. I'm finding myself cheering her on and hoping she'll escape this particular tragedy in this life so she can get past this stage and we can move on. I like too that Atkinson is not telling you much at all. You have to pay attention and piece the story and the lives together. You have to know what happened in the past life and what led us to come to this life now. And as someone who is just terrible with novels - or movies - that do weird stuff with timelines, I think I'm following quite well, and so no doubt no other reader will have trouble with it.
Since she is writing about the 20th century, Atkinson has no trouble finding powerful themes for her novel: two world wars, Germany, England, bombings in London, women issues, famine, and more interesting topics of adultery, affairs, exploring one's own path in a society and a time that judges your every move, and society does include one's own flesh and blood: one's family. I loved the characters of Ursula, Todd, Izzy, Hugh, and Crichton.
In the end, I can't help but feel sorry and nostalgic for Ursula, as if I'm missing the new versions of her life recurring until all eternity. When does it end, the chance to live again? In Groundhog Day, it was after you learned the lesson and could properly move on to tomorrow, but with Ursula? Oh you must really just ready this novel, it's so very good.
Well, Life after Life is a repetition of this very concept for the incredible LIVES of one Ursula Todd. I never liked Groundhog Day, and much as I like Bill Murray, I found the movie rather annoying. Oh not again! was my sentiment for seeing the same scene over and over, and yet I could appreciate the concept if not the particular events and settings and people. If you could turn back time, what would you do differently? It's not just an interesting concept, it is a massively complex one and it only works if you can do a great job with the execution of it, and Kate Atkinson does it remarkably well. She imagines all the horrible things that could have happened to Ursula, and in some lives, they befall her earlier than in other lives, all marked by the somber words: Darkness fell.
Atkinson is rich in her prose, elaborate in her descriptions, and remarkable in creating bonding with the reader - you and me. I had never heard of her until I found this book in the audio selection of Overdrive from the library, and I'm thrilled. She's a phenomenal novelist, with more than a little of Jane Austen in her. The settings of 20th century, the wars, England, Germany, and an upper class British family and the writing style all give me flashbacks to Jane Austen, with a 100 years of period gap.
I like Ursula so much and feel for her. I like reading stories where I like the protagonist. I'm finding myself cheering her on and hoping she'll escape this particular tragedy in this life so she can get past this stage and we can move on. I like too that Atkinson is not telling you much at all. You have to pay attention and piece the story and the lives together. You have to know what happened in the past life and what led us to come to this life now. And as someone who is just terrible with novels - or movies - that do weird stuff with timelines, I think I'm following quite well, and so no doubt no other reader will have trouble with it.
Since she is writing about the 20th century, Atkinson has no trouble finding powerful themes for her novel: two world wars, Germany, England, bombings in London, women issues, famine, and more interesting topics of adultery, affairs, exploring one's own path in a society and a time that judges your every move, and society does include one's own flesh and blood: one's family. I loved the characters of Ursula, Todd, Izzy, Hugh, and Crichton.
In the end, I can't help but feel sorry and nostalgic for Ursula, as if I'm missing the new versions of her life recurring until all eternity. When does it end, the chance to live again? In Groundhog Day, it was after you learned the lesson and could properly move on to tomorrow, but with Ursula? Oh you must really just ready this novel, it's so very good.
The story was well written and fascinating but this book was difficult to read on the kindle because of the need to return to prior versions of Ursula's life. Flipping back just isn't the same.
adventurous
dark
emotional
reflective
sad
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
I had read this years ago, and probably liked it more the first time. Found the middle to be the strongest, and the WW2 bombing descriptions hard to stomach with Gaza in mind
There's a Margaret Atwood short story called "Happy Endings," which is actually a series of very brief stories in which two characters meet and eventually die, with different variations of events in between (no conflict, internal conflict, external conflict, and so on). It makes the point that the What of the plot of a story is not the most important aspect of it.
Life After Life seems to me to be a very long, very drawn-out version of "Happy Endings." We catch on quickly that the main character, Ursula Todd, is going to die -- dies, in fact, in the very first brief chapter -- and then we will get to see what happens if she didn't die and her life continued. At some point the story gets stuck -- it seems there is no way to avoid Ursula coming down with the Spanish flu -- and Ursula begins to take a hand in her own destiny through premonitions that guide her toward a survival path. She doesn't remember her former lives (except, possibly, toward the very end of the book), just has a sense of déjà vu about certain things that allows her to avoid danger the second or third time around.
In a way, it's a take on the idea that there are infinite universes, that every decision we make creates a branch in which a parallel universe is created, and we are reading each of these parallel universe plots. It's also like a Choose Your Own Adventure book in that every path eventually ends in death and you start over again, making different choices.
This plot device around which the book is built is at the core of both what I liked and what I hated about this book. Liked, because it provides an opportunity to see a number of different life paths that a woman born in 1910 to a wealthy family could have taken -- their variety and their limits -- without having a passel of characters to keep track of. (This was the downfall of The Glass Palace: In trying to show every viewpoint and every life path possible, the author created far too many characters.) Hated, because there was very little driving the book forward. Every section began a new game of, "OK, when/how is she gonna die this time," and it became hard for me to care about what her umpteenth life path would be. Presumably what was meant to drive the book forward was the opening chapter in which it appears that Ursula is (maybe) going to eventually kill Hitler, but this isn't revisited again until the very end of the book, which means there's a LOT of life paths to slog through in the meantime.
There are also a lot of unanswered questions left by the book. As I said after reading The Silence of Bonaventure Arrow, I don't mind fantasy or magical realism or whatever you want to call supernatural elements in a book, I just want to be given some sort of internally coherent explanation of how they work. But this book offers no explanation or resolution. Even if Ursula kills Hitler, she's only saved the world from him in that particular timeline, and then she dies and her life starts all over again. Does she have to try to kill him in as many parallel universes as possible? Some discussion among characters implies that she may get to stop the merry-go-round once she "gets everything right," but we as the reader never get to know that for sure (unlike in Groundhog Day, where Bill Murray gets to stop reliving the same day once he learns certain life lessons).At the very end we see a version of her life in which she's managed to save both Teddy and Nancy, but the last chapter is another "Snow" chapter, implying that she's been reborn yet again.
I will give Atkinson props that, from a prose perspective, the book is easy to read, even when there's a lack of plot-driven motivation to do so. She also manages to jump back and forth in time constantly without getting the reader too lost (at least, I wasn't), which is an impressive trick to pull off. In the end, it wasn't a terrible book -- it provided some food for thought about life, decisions, and so on -- but I personally have a hard time understanding how Entertainment Weekly crowned it the best novel of 2013 and Goodreads readers the best Historical Fiction of the year. Maybe if it had been half as long it wouldn't have seemed such a chore to read.
Life After Life seems to me to be a very long, very drawn-out version of "Happy Endings." We catch on quickly that the main character, Ursula Todd, is going to die -- dies, in fact, in the very first brief chapter -- and then we will get to see what happens if she didn't die and her life continued. At some point the story gets stuck -- it seems there is no way to avoid Ursula coming down with the Spanish flu -- and Ursula begins to take a hand in her own destiny through premonitions that guide her toward a survival path. She doesn't remember her former lives (except, possibly, toward the very end of the book), just has a sense of déjà vu about certain things that allows her to avoid danger the second or third time around.
In a way, it's a take on the idea that there are infinite universes, that every decision we make creates a branch in which a parallel universe is created, and we are reading each of these parallel universe plots. It's also like a Choose Your Own Adventure book in that every path eventually ends in death and you start over again, making different choices.
This plot device around which the book is built is at the core of both what I liked and what I hated about this book. Liked, because it provides an opportunity to see a number of different life paths that a woman born in 1910 to a wealthy family could have taken -- their variety and their limits -- without having a passel of characters to keep track of. (This was the downfall of The Glass Palace: In trying to show every viewpoint and every life path possible, the author created far too many characters.) Hated, because there was very little driving the book forward. Every section began a new game of, "OK, when/how is she gonna die this time," and it became hard for me to care about what her umpteenth life path would be. Presumably what was meant to drive the book forward was the opening chapter in which it appears that Ursula is (maybe) going to eventually kill Hitler, but this isn't revisited again until the very end of the book, which means there's a LOT of life paths to slog through in the meantime.
There are also a lot of unanswered questions left by the book. As I said after reading The Silence of Bonaventure Arrow, I don't mind fantasy or magical realism or whatever you want to call supernatural elements in a book, I just want to be given some sort of internally coherent explanation of how they work. But this book offers no explanation or resolution. Even if Ursula kills Hitler, she's only saved the world from him in that particular timeline, and then she dies and her life starts all over again. Does she have to try to kill him in as many parallel universes as possible? Some discussion among characters implies that she may get to stop the merry-go-round once she "gets everything right," but we as the reader never get to know that for sure (unlike in Groundhog Day, where Bill Murray gets to stop reliving the same day once he learns certain life lessons).
I will give Atkinson props that, from a prose perspective, the book is easy to read, even when there's a lack of plot-driven motivation to do so. She also manages to jump back and forth in time constantly without getting the reader too lost (at least, I wasn't), which is an impressive trick to pull off. In the end, it wasn't a terrible book -- it provided some food for thought about life, decisions, and so on -- but I personally have a hard time understanding how Entertainment Weekly crowned it the best novel of 2013 and Goodreads readers the best Historical Fiction of the year. Maybe if it had been half as long it wouldn't have seemed such a chore to read.
I had a hard time getting into this book in the beginning because I just couldn't see where the author was heading with the story. Once I kept reading though I was hooked. I just had to know how far Ursula would make it each time and under what circumstances she would have to start over. Some of the endings made me quite sad for her (like when her bastard of a husband killed her, or when she had the abortion), but it was nice to see how she was able to make a slight change the next time around that would prevent the unfortunate ending from happening. I still didn't really get the ending though which is why I gave my review only 4 stars. All around a great read and I would recommend it.
adventurous
reflective
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
So smart and original. Strong 4 star rating -- almost a 5.
Some books leave an impact. They stick with you long after you've read them. I have a feeling this will be one of those books for me. My Mom had given me a copy of Kate Atkinson's Life After Life several years ago, and only just this February did I finally feel inspired to take it off the shelf. Little did I know it was the perfect February read. This book is not meant to be read on the beach or in the summer. It's a book for the depths of northern winter, meant to be read in a time when the world looks really bleak but we all keep living anyway.
I feel like anything I say about this book will be too much of a spoiler, so I don't want to make this review too thorough. I've seen some reviewers comment with frustrations about the style and pace of the book, which is very stop-start-stop-start due to the main character being reborn and living her life over and over again throughout the course of the book. I can see how this could be frustrating, but I found myself feeling in awe of the author's ability to use this style of storytelling and yet still make each telling of the story unique and interesting. Each unfolding only brings the characters more to life and adds complexity to the story. It's brilliantly done!
I did find that at times I was wishing for more agency somehow on the part of Ursula. I wanted her to reach some kind of climactic realization of her abilities and take charge in a drastic way, but that climax didn't exactly happen, at least not in the way I was wishing for. But I don't think that frustration detracts from the greatness of this book. Oftentimes I've discovered that the sign of a good book is that it frustrates you and subverts your expectations. If I'm wanting to literally reach into the story and shake the characters and say "Hey, you need to do this differently!" it's a sign that I'm pretty into the book! And I felt that way numerous times while reading this.
I have a feeling that if I read it again I'd discover even more connections that I'd missed. There is meticulous craft in this work, and I recommend it to anyone looking for a winter book that keeps you enthralled until the end (and maybe afterwards too).
I feel like anything I say about this book will be too much of a spoiler, so I don't want to make this review too thorough. I've seen some reviewers comment with frustrations about the style and pace of the book, which is very stop-start-stop-start due to the main character being reborn and living her life over and over again throughout the course of the book. I can see how this could be frustrating, but I found myself feeling in awe of the author's ability to use this style of storytelling and yet still make each telling of the story unique and interesting. Each unfolding only brings the characters more to life and adds complexity to the story. It's brilliantly done!
I did find that at times I was wishing for more agency somehow on the part of Ursula. I wanted her to reach some kind of climactic realization of her abilities and take charge in a drastic way, but that climax didn't exactly happen, at least not in the way I was wishing for. But I don't think that frustration detracts from the greatness of this book. Oftentimes I've discovered that the sign of a good book is that it frustrates you and subverts your expectations. If I'm wanting to literally reach into the story and shake the characters and say "Hey, you need to do this differently!" it's a sign that I'm pretty into the book! And I felt that way numerous times while reading this.
I have a feeling that if I read it again I'd discover even more connections that I'd missed. There is meticulous craft in this work, and I recommend it to anyone looking for a winter book that keeps you enthralled until the end (and maybe afterwards too).