A review by charlote_1347
Life after Life by Kate Atkinson

3.0

This novel was an amalgamation of good and bad. From the onset, it never captured my attention. A friend saw it when we were shopping and pointed it out to me as an 'amazing book'. To avoid upsetting her, I bought it. I am not disappointed with my purchase but I'm also not convinced this book is the next classic. The idea was brilliant - a woman who relives the same life every time she dies. The novel's structure coincided perfectly with this non-linear story, at least in the first third of the novel. After that, it grows confusing in places. Times jumps backwards when it's not supposed to and subtle things change, things that the reader doesn't necessarily pick up on, that affect the next section. The ending, perhaps because of this confusion, teeters off. There is no bang, no final plot twist, no big bang of realisation and meaning. After trawling through six hundred pages, that made the ending as unsatisfactory as endings come. To be fair, this was the only bad thing about the book and while it's a doozy, the characters help to make up for it. Each was intricately depicted and three-dimensional in each reality. My favourites were Teddy, Hugh and Ursula. Of course it was also thrilling to read the scenes containing Hitler, if only to hear another interpretation of what he was like. I would recommend this novel to anyone who is (a) interested in detailed war-time narrative and (b) doesn't mind their books with a good dose of huh?