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halfmanhalfbook 's review for:
Life after Life
by Kate Atkinson
Ursula Todd, is born on the 11 February 1910 to an upper middle class British family, but in the first encounter, she is still born strangled by the umbilical cord. In a parallel story, the same baby is born and survives.
As Ursulas lives out her life, she has multiple iterations of being born, and surviving to a greater age. Until she reached the Second World War. In each of these lives, she sees different effects, and these different lives have a strong effect of deja vu for each event she witnesses. As she realises the implications of her parallel lives she knows that she has a chance to change the future and stop the misery of World War Two
The writing in the story was very powerful at times, in particular the events of the blitz during the war and the suffering of the population of London. But I found the concept of the multiple lives of Ursula harder to get a grip on in the context of this story and time that it is set. This was a shame really, but it is good too see mainstream authors looking to the science fiction genre for inspiration for stories.
As Ursulas lives out her life, she has multiple iterations of being born, and surviving to a greater age. Until she reached the Second World War. In each of these lives, she sees different effects, and these different lives have a strong effect of deja vu for each event she witnesses. As she realises the implications of her parallel lives she knows that she has a chance to change the future and stop the misery of World War Two
The writing in the story was very powerful at times, in particular the events of the blitz during the war and the suffering of the population of London. But I found the concept of the multiple lives of Ursula harder to get a grip on in the context of this story and time that it is set. This was a shame really, but it is good too see mainstream authors looking to the science fiction genre for inspiration for stories.