Life After Life

A Novel

By: Kate Atkinson

Narrated by: Fenella Woolgar

Length: 15 hrs and 26 mins

Publisher's summary

What if you could live again and again, until you got it right?

On a cold and snowy night in 1910, Ursula Todd is born to an English banker and his wife. She dies before she can draw her first breath. On that same cold and snowy night, Ursula Todd is born, lets out a lusty wail, and embarks upon a life that will be, to say the least, unusual. For as she grows, she also dies, repeatedly, in a variety of ways, while the young century marches on towards its second cataclysmic world war.

Does Ursula's apparently infinite number of lives give her the power to save the world from its inevitable destiny? And if she can - will she? Darkly comic, startlingly poignant, and utterly original: this is Kate Atkinson at her absolute best.

©2011 Kate Atkinson (P)2013 Hachette Audio

Critic reviews

"A densely layered, century-sprawling work that is a formidable bid for the brass ring of the U.K.'s prestigious Man Booker Prize. Life After Life is a drama of failures and providential rebirths...High-concept premise...A deft and convincing portrayal of an English family's evolution across two world wars...Marvelous...Not only does she bring characters to life with enviable ease, she has an almost offhand knack for vivid scene-setting ...Her storytelling prowess is on fullest display in a gorgeous and nerve-racking novella-length chapter set during the Blitz...It's spellbindingly done." (Sam Sacks, The Wall Street Journal)

"Life After Life is a masterpiece about how even the smallest choices can sometimes change the course of history. It's wise, bittersweet, funny, and unlike anything else you've ever read. Kate Atkinson is one of my all-time favorite novelists, and I believe this is her best book yet." (J. Courtney Sullivan, best-selling author of Maine and Commencement)

"Life After Life is dark and funny and suspenseful and sad all at the same time." (Emily Ecton, NPR, Great Reads of 2013)

Enjoyable but irritating

I enjoy Ms Atkinson's writing.
I am intrigued by the premise of this book.
Unlike many who have reviewed this book. I do not believe it is great literature.
I believe a general loss of hope and faith has given this fresh treatment of reincarnation as a palimpsest versus a cycle more weight than it otherwise would have enjoyed. It is fun, not ground-breaking.
The writing is uneven. Sometimes truly fine, others unpolished. The characters suffer from the same difficulties.
The shifting sands of time can be dusorienting. I blame the this for the difficulties in writing the author had, as well as the difficulties I had keeping track of the story. I enjoyed what the author has managed to create within that context. I was very ready for the story to end when it did.
The performance is absolutely pristine.

LOVE IT

I have enjoyed all Kate Atkinson books but was concerned about this because of its description.... I was wrong to be worried. This was so different but so, so good. Keep surprising me!

Great story, Great Reader.

This is one of my favorite stories to read again and again! I'll probably read it in my next life and the one after that!

Everyone wants this!

Everyone wishes they could have done something over again in their life to correct a mistake or make the right choice, or even to see if another choice would have led down a better path in life. Ursula gets that ability in this excellent novel. Ursula is a young girl who gets to do life over and over again until she gets it exactly right. Of course, the ultimate point of the story is whether or not it's possible to get it exactly right or if you are doomed to infinite repetition.
Very powerful, very emotional.
Highly recommended!

Thoroughly enjoyed!

Thoroughly enjoyed! A little confusing to follow because I listened to it. I liked it enough to read the print version.

Interesting idea, but exhaustive at times

I've been curious about this book for a long time. I'm glad I read it, but after a while Ursula's story became more repetitive than I liked. Since Ursula experiences so many lives, it can get confusing, especially when listening to it. I wanted to be able to flip back through the pages to see what all had happened in that life. As her life got longer, each story became longer. They were a lot of similarities at the beginning of her life and then some decision changes the course of her life slightly or significantly. After so many restarts, I found parts to be exhaustive. it is not a terrible book, it just wasn't great

10 stars

That's what this book and performance deserve.

It's also remarkable that it was possible to follow the complex structure of this book despite the fact that it was delivered in audio. I had no trouble remembering details and could recognize information from earlier in the story when it came up again. This book was simply magical. I'm now on to the sequel.

A New Twist on Time Travel

This wasn't actually travel, nor was it a "Groundhog Day" repeat experience, but rather something different. The story is more of an exploration of the road not taken. The life of the heroine restarts many times, and ends many times dependant on the choices she makes. It makes me think of, say, passing an automobile accident on the highway, and thinking, "if I'd left the store earlier instead of going back for that forgotten butter I'd have been here at the instant that accident happened - maybe even in it." This is the story of a person's exploration of the many paths, the many choices and the many endings. I really enjoyed it because it was something so very different from the standard fiction formula.

Finally a look into the might-have-beens.

We often take it for granted that we'll never know what might have been. If only we'd chosen a different path. If only that one thing had never happened. If only that one thing had actually happened... This book lets us see it, and it's interesting, and refreshing, and exciting. We know Ursula is experiencing life after life, but it appears that the people around her are as well. And that thought that everyone is blessed (doomed) to live again and again until they get it right is such a big idea that this book hasn't left me in the six weeks since I finished it.

I really enjoyed this book. Granted, it took a while to get into because her lives in the beginning were so short. But after an hour or so, as her lives get longer and her choices and the choices of the people around her become more complicated, things get more interesting. What can she change? What can't she change? And are the people around her also experiencing this (for lack of a better word) déjà vu? (I think they are.)

I found the book surprisingly easy to follow despite the number of times the book jumps around in the timeline, and I was so engrossed in it that paying attention was effortless. Fenella Woolgar narrated it excellently, especially considering all of the languages contained in the book.

I would highly recommend this book, especially to those interested in what it was like to be a civilian in England or Germany during World War II.

Sharp and enjoyable

This book reminded me of my favorite Kate Atkinson novel -Behind the Scenes at the Museum, but in many aspects Life After Life is even better written and developed.
As noted by previous reviewers, the book is about a British Woman, nee 1910, that gets to live her life over and over again, while in each round we get to discover more about her family, her surroundings, her emotions.
The story itself is very well written and creats a very good starting point for readers imagination to run wild,