There is no intense mystery or suspense as such which incites the conventional reader, in fact it is curiosity. The originality of the concept is what is enthralling. It narrates and navigates through the various outcomes of the choices she makes in life. Ursula is given the opportunity to change her fate. To be concise, Life After Life is a tale of second chances. But Ursula is born again, this time there is no Führer, no war.

When she is reborn after this incident she coquettishly tries to befriend Hitler in his youth and then assassinates him in a café following which she is shot by his compatriots. For instance, the book begins with Ursula assassinating Hitler himself in his youth which later it is revealed to the reader that when she died in the Berlin war she realized it was Hitler who was responsible for the war, her death and that of her loved ones. There’s a tingling sensation that lingers in her conscience beckoning her to avoid or engage in a particular course of action to prevent a certain incident from occurring, something portentous, but she isn’t wholly aware that this portent event she is striving to avoid is her death. Ursula, however, has a dim sense of déjà vu. Now the catch here is after each death she is reborn as herself, Ursula, back at her Home Town in Fox Corner, as if the incidents which led to her death didn’t occur at all. First time, she dies right after birth Second, she falls off the roof Third, she dies of a mortal flu, Fourth, she is murdered by her husband and fifth, she dies in the Berlin war. The protagonist in this story, Ursula, dies and keeps dying only to be born again each time her life resuming from her birth, the events occurring as they are bound to occur, it’s only Ursula’s decisions at that moment that determine the future course of events.

Although it bears a faint semblance to the concept of time travel, it is perceivably distinct. The concept of this novel is perhaps the most striking, original and unprecedented one. Kate Atkinson has conceived such a poignant, mysterious and wildly imaginative tale of life and death and the trivialities that fill the spaces between them that even the most ardent, eclectic reader would have never come across something like this. This is my first Kate Atkinson novel and I must say I am decidedly baffled. Life After Life by Kate Atkinson is a paragon of literary fiction 2013, setting an early benchmark for forthcoming novels.

“What if you had the chance to live your life again and again, until you finally got it right?” – Kate Atkinson, Life After Lifeīrace yourselves ladies and gentlemen what we have here could easily be the best novel of 2013 (albeit being too early to speculate).

Life after life book review atkinson