Life After Life

By: Kate Atkinson

Narrated by: Fenella Woolgar

Length: 15 hrs and 28 mins

Publisher's summary

What if you had the chance to live your life again and again, until you finally got it right?

During a snowstorm in England in 1910, a baby is born and dies before she can take her first breath. During a snowstorm in England in 1910, the same baby is born and lives to tell the tale.

What if there were second chances? And third chances? In fact an infinite number of chances to live your life? Would you eventually be able to save the world from its own inevitable destiny? And would you even want to?

Life After Life follows Ursula Todd as she lives through the turbulent events of the last century again and again. With wit and compassion, she finds warmth even in life’s bleakest moments, and shows an extraordinary ability to evoke the past. Here is Kate Atkinson at her most profound and inventive, in a novel that celebrates the best and worst of ourselves.

©2013 Kate Atkinson (P)2013 Random House Audiobooks

Superb rendition of life after life

Brilliantly read - a great way to listen to Kate Atkinson - one of her best books - I loved it!

A wonderful novel

This is the first Kate Atkinson novel I've listened to. I thought it was superb. So good that I immediately downloaded another by her. The middle chapters that depict the blitz could stand alone as a novella.

A puzzle - is it worth the effort?

If you could live your life over time and time again, would you/ could you ever get it right? That is the central question of this book. The next question posed is if this ability to relive your life would be a gift or a curse. This is a book of fantasy and historical fiction. It poses philosophical questions concerning how life should be lived.

Atkinson's writing is clever, both the questions she poses and her ironic, satirical, sarcastic and often sardonic humor. Don't expect good-natured laughs based on happiness. It is solely because of the writing that I have chosen three rather than only two stars.

The book is confusing. Not only does the reader jump back and forth in time but also into different versions of the same story, the point being that there is not just one story. The stories overlap at points only to later go off in different directions. The reader must continually figure out if they have been dropped into a different version or a different time period of an earlier version. In addition, many characters are not introduced. When they are first mentioned you have not the slightest idea who they are.

By the end everything is interwoven. Picture a twine of yarn that is split at several points, each strand going off in different directions. The reader hops back and forth to different segments. Is there one "correct" ending? Is there one preferable ending? Is it possible to choose the final destination? Most importantly, what is the message of the book? Was the message worth the confusion? In my view, the answer is no.

I thought the author magnificently described life in London both during the Blitz and after the war. I enjoyed the segment set in Obersalzberg, at Hitler's residence Berghof, near Berchtesgaden, Bavaria, Germany, meeting up with Eva Braun. This IS a book of historical fiction. Events of both WW1 and WW2 are covered.

The audiobook narration by Fenella Woolgar was exemplary. Irish, British, American and French accents are all perfectly executed. I believe the audio version further enhances how people of different cultures "think".

You must keep a paper and pen nearby to jot down the date of the episode you are listening to. In addition, I recommend you read this book quickly; if you read a little each day you are sure to get lost! Good Luck!

Mesmerising!

Would you recommend this audiobook to a friend? If so, why?

The story draws you in from the very start. Over and over the story is retold and the path of her life is rewritten. It's gentle and sad, uplifting and wistful. I really enjoyed it.

complicated time travel story

really struggled with this book. I think it's a very difficult concept for audible. the switches in time are complicated, and difficult to follow. one keeps thinking you are hearing the same thing over and over and the book has a problem with the audio, but it is the same story in different eras.

Wonderful.

The combination of magical realism and a family narrative works fantastically work. Each live relived presents different dramas, joys and sorrows, such that by the end you feel you have inhabited a life with all its possible outcomes. Totally satisfying.

Tedious

What disappointed you about Life After Life?

The repetition of the first chapter I felt that we were never getting beyond the birth of the baby in February 1910. The whole story was pointless, the author said she had no idea what the story was about , that says it all.

Would you ever listen to anything by Kate Atkinson again?

No if this story was an example of her writing .

What aspect of Fenella Woolgar’s performance would you have changed?

No the reading was OK the story was poor

What character would you cut from Life After Life?

Derek Oliphant

Any additional comments?

The story would have been enjoyable if there weren't so many possible aspects to Ursula's Life

So tedious

I really wanted to like this because I love everything else Kate Atkinson has written. So I kept trying and re-trying to slog through it. But it is so, so boring. The characters are bland, the setting is bland and every time her life started again, I groaned because I knew there was just more blandness coming. Really disappointed

Could not follow the shifting timelines

The most powerful message was the horrors of civilian suffering . How DARE allies and Germans alike so relentlessly bomb each other's defenceless citizens