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A review by thelizabeth
Life After Life by Kate Atkinson
5.0
Aaaugh. Is this going to be the best book I read this year? In JANUARY??? That's it, 2014! Your bar is really high! This is gonna be hard on us both.
This book is practically perfect, I think. (The last book I remember saying this about was Cutting For Stone, FWIW.) I almost fail to think of any way to improve it and make me love it more. IT IS SO GOOD.
This writing is good not just because the idea is good, every scene crisp and right, each of the dozen characters loved. The writing is good on that big, deep level of words and meanings, weaving itself until it's so perfect you kind of want to hit somebody. The details are so remarkably nice that I honestly don't feel like discussing them. It was so much more wonderful to fall for them myself. The work is so unbelievably subtle, I don't want to bruise anything by waving my finger at it.
I avoided this book for a while because I couldn't understand the premise exactly. What is going on here, with birth and death? Is it a supernatural thing? No, although yes: it's understood, and clear to the reader, that Ursula relives her life whenever her life ends. When she dies, the story resets itself, slightly differently, a sixth sense helping her bend her fate to keep her alive — and sometimes it takes several tries. (Things that it turns out are VERY DIFFICULT to avoid: Spanish flu; a German bomb falling right on your apartment. Also beware turn-of-the-century childhood, generally.) Ursula doesn't ever straightforwardly understand the actual cause and effect of what is going on when she dies and relives her life, but she is trapped by deja vu, and she knows the moments when action needs to be taken. She takes it, then, because she somehow understands that if she doesn't solve this problem now, the problem will not go away. It's as if she knows that there is a next time, even though she doesn't know.
So, in the reading, this means that the story basically centers around those small pivotal moments in life: the days when something momentous happens of some kind or another, and perhaps no matter how many ways you live it, dinner is always ruined, and you always find the dog.
This would be a great one for the internet to play with, to make charts and timelines. There's a pretty remarkable and spoiler-filled analysis on "narrative design" here and here, with a chart that I like though I want MOOORE. (What an amazing blog, though, regardless!) Also a little breakdown of all of Ursula's deaths, here.
It has been a while since a book raised so many beautiful and lasting things for me to think about. I needed that. What is raised, here, is the question of what gets set in motion when Ursula sort of begins to sense what happens to her. What about those moments that change everything? What about the things you can and can't rewrite? The most harrowing section of the book for me actually came long before any German bombs. (This is really spoilery for real). I cried. It is the most devastating moment she has ever lived through, BUT SHE DOES NOT DIE. Somehow, it is not just the awfulness of Ursula's experience that makes this so harsh and tragic: up to this point, we have watched her instantly escape all of the terrible things that happen, rather than have to live with them. But this one goes on punishing her.
How do we go on from the things that rip our lives apart? How do we help others go on? Though they apply to herself, these are also the questions that Ursula has charged herself with night after night of the Blitz, volunteering as part of a rescue patrol, identifying bomb victims and pulling them out of rubble. When it is that bad, so bad, what can you think? What can you say? Her inadvertent mentor, the warden on the squad, tells her: "We must remember these people when we are safely in the future." It is so strong and beautiful a gospel, but is it enough?
I suppose one important thing that I haven't addressed is, for all of this high-concept reincarnation of an ordinary English girl, why is it even happening? In a way, the things I mentioned in the previous paragraphs are actually a lot more important to me, because I'm always affected a lot by the thematic impact of a book, and I am so impressed with this novel for having such a strong one. But, indeed, there is a point. And even though it pretty much is revealed to us on page one, perhaps it is sensitive enough for spoiler space? One of the purposes of reincarnation that is discussed in the book is the need for us to "get it right," and for Ursula this act seems to be the apex. Interestingly, though, this very moment was not actually the end of the book. A couple of other short scenes follow, which have nothing to do with that event, and I think I would have chosen to remove them? Or simply move them? But it probably won't be so hard to convince me it's perfect.
You could read this book rather quickly, though I savored a bit longer than necessary. Structurally, the story must repeat itself a few times and I got a little muddled which "reality" we were in, whether such and such did or didn't happen. But this doesn't actually seem to matter very much, as it's the emotional reality that matters more, and we always know what the stakes are because all the situations become so familiar to us. It repeats without being repetitive, and just made me feel at home there. The scenery really has everything: the book's first half simply depicts a beautiful and idyllic English country childhood (except for the occasional dying, of course). A family of characters. Things get a little freaky during adolescence, and then adulthood starts to spin off every which way, with her studies, her couplings, work in the war ministry and so many bombs and, indeed, Germany. I cannot overstate how pleasant this was to read, and how glad I am.
I don't know how to say this without sounding mean? But I'll try. Because very nearly, this is almost not at all the same Kate Atkinson who writes the Jackson Brodie mystery novels. I do like those novels! Mostly. But this book is a literary work I didn't know she was capable of from reading those. I had no idea. Maybe her secret is out, maybe now we can tell the difference when she writes a novel over dinner and telly or not? Because now that we know she writes so beautifully, we're going to hold her to it. We have no choice!
Loved it. So epic and so personal, an instant favorite.
This book is practically perfect, I think. (The last book I remember saying this about was Cutting For Stone, FWIW.) I almost fail to think of any way to improve it and make me love it more. IT IS SO GOOD.
This writing is good not just because the idea is good, every scene crisp and right, each of the dozen characters loved. The writing is good on that big, deep level of words and meanings, weaving itself until it's so perfect you kind of want to hit somebody. The details are so remarkably nice that I honestly don't feel like discussing them. It was so much more wonderful to fall for them myself. The work is so unbelievably subtle, I don't want to bruise anything by waving my finger at it.
I avoided this book for a while because I couldn't understand the premise exactly. What is going on here, with birth and death? Is it a supernatural thing? No, although yes: it's understood, and clear to the reader, that Ursula relives her life whenever her life ends. When she dies, the story resets itself, slightly differently, a sixth sense helping her bend her fate to keep her alive — and sometimes it takes several tries. (Things that it turns out are VERY DIFFICULT to avoid: Spanish flu; a German bomb falling right on your apartment. Also beware turn-of-the-century childhood, generally.) Ursula doesn't ever straightforwardly understand the actual cause and effect of what is going on when she dies and relives her life
Spoiler
(until the very end)So, in the reading, this means that the story basically centers around those small pivotal moments in life: the days when something momentous happens of some kind or another, and perhaps no matter how many ways you live it, dinner is always ruined, and you always find the dog.
This would be a great one for the internet to play with, to make charts and timelines. There's a pretty remarkable and spoiler-filled analysis on "narrative design" here and here, with a chart that I like though I want MOOORE. (What an amazing blog, though, regardless!) Also a little breakdown of all of Ursula's deaths, here.
It has been a while since a book raised so many beautiful and lasting things for me to think about. I needed that. What is raised, here, is the question of what gets set in motion when Ursula sort of begins to sense what happens to her. What about those moments that change everything? What about the things you can and can't rewrite? The most harrowing section of the book for me actually came long before any German bombs. (This is really spoilery for real)
Spoiler
Ursula is raped and becomes pregnant. Not really knowing what is happening, she's brought by her aunt for an abortion. She ends up hospitalized from an infection, near death.Spoiler
Her mother rejects her, and she marries a terrible man. Eventually, it all does get rewritten — after some good long years of misery, her horrible husband finally beats her to death. She does not have to marry him again.How do we go on from the things that rip our lives apart? How do we help others go on? Though they apply to herself, these are also the questions that Ursula has charged herself with night after night of the Blitz, volunteering as part of a rescue patrol, identifying bomb victims and pulling them out of rubble. When it is that bad, so bad, what can you think? What can you say? Her inadvertent mentor, the warden on the squad, tells her: "We must remember these people when we are safely in the future." It is so strong and beautiful a gospel, but is it enough?
I suppose one important thing that I haven't addressed is, for all of this high-concept reincarnation of an ordinary English girl, why is it even happening? In a way, the things I mentioned in the previous paragraphs are actually a lot more important to me, because I'm always affected a lot by the thematic impact of a book, and I am so impressed with this novel for having such a strong one. But, indeed, there is a point. And even though it pretty much is revealed to us on page one, perhaps it is sensitive enough for spoiler space?
Spoiler
It sounds too trite to sum it up this way, but once Ursula finally understands that she has coherent memories from her other lives, she galvanizes them all to come back once more to go and kill Hitler before he gets going, thus preventing WWII. (Consequently, this was an interesting one to read closely behind Alfred and Emily, which unwrote WWI.) We don't know what came next, after this assassination, because Ursula is immediately shot. And this only happens in one of the branches of the story. But it is, seemingly, the point.You could read this book rather quickly, though I savored a bit longer than necessary. Structurally, the story must repeat itself a few times and I got a little muddled which "reality" we were in, whether such and such did or didn't happen. But this doesn't actually seem to matter very much, as it's the emotional reality that matters more, and we always know what the stakes are because all the situations become so familiar to us. It repeats without being repetitive, and just made me feel at home there. The scenery really has everything: the book's first half simply depicts a beautiful and idyllic English country childhood (except for the occasional dying, of course). A family of characters. Things get a little freaky during adolescence, and then adulthood starts to spin off every which way, with her studies, her couplings, work in the war ministry and so many bombs and, indeed, Germany. I cannot overstate how pleasant this was to read, and how glad I am.
I don't know how to say this without sounding mean? But I'll try. Because very nearly, this is almost not at all the same Kate Atkinson who writes the Jackson Brodie mystery novels. I do like those novels! Mostly. But this book is a literary work I didn't know she was capable of from reading those. I had no idea. Maybe her secret is out, maybe now we can tell the difference when she writes a novel over dinner and telly or not? Because now that we know she writes so beautifully, we're going to hold her to it. We have no choice!
Loved it. So epic and so personal, an instant favorite.