Life After Life

A Novel

By: Kate Atkinson

Narrated by: Fenella Woolgar

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.

Critic reviews

"There aren't enough breathless adjectives to describe Life After Life: Dazzling, witty, moving, joyful, mournful, profound. Wildly inventive, deeply felt. Hilarious. Humane."—Gillian Flynn, author of the #1 New York Times bestseller Gone Girl

"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, bestselling author of Maine and Commencement

"Kate Atkinson's new novel is a box of delights. Ingenious in construction, indefatigably entertaining, it grips the reader's imagination on the first page and never lets go. If you wish to be moved and astonished, read it. And if you want to give a dazzling present, buy it for your friends."—Hilary Mantel, author of Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies

"An audacious, ambitious book that challenges notions of time, fate and free will, not to mention narrative plausibility...[Atkinson's] writing is funny and quirky and sharp and sad - calamity laced with humor - and full of quietly heroic characters who offer knowing Lorrie Moore-esque parenthetical asides...Atkinson's true genius is structure...Each version is entirely and equally credible."—Sarah Lyall, New York Times

"An exercise in narrative gutsiness; a meditation on history, contingency, and free will; and the best new novel I've read this year."—Kathryn Schulz, New York Magazine

"[Atkinson's] latest novel, Life After Life, is her very best... A big book that defies logic, chronology and even history in ways that underscore its author's fully untethered imagination... Even without the sleight of hand, Life After Life would be an exceptionally captivating book with an engaging cast of characters... [Atkinson's] own writerly cradle was rocked by a very sure hand indeed."—Janet Maslin, New York Times

"Audacious, the kind of sweeping virtuoso epic that actually earns overheated book-jacket phrases like 'tour de force!'...Atkinson is a fantastic storyteller... It's all so richly imagined and ingeniously executed that the mystery feels right. Her domestic vignettes and wide-screen portraits of wartime resonate with startling physical and emotional clarity, and even her repetitions find fresh revelations... What Atkinson has mastered: shining a light on how full life is of choices and chance, and how lucky we are to live it."—Leah Greenblatt, Entertainment Weekly

Exhilarating, breathtaking book

I could not put this fascinating book down. I was breathless when I came to the end of it. I quickly downloaded the companion novel, A God in Ruins, and was moved to tears by it as well.

I'm now going back to listen to this novel again, something I never do so soon after the first reading. There is so much technique and so much heart, I need to experience it again.

Not what I was expecting

This book is more of a life story rather than an adventure. We follow Ursala through her lives and see the way she tries to change things for the better ( with only intuitive feelings of her past lives). Each life gets a little longer and she retains more of her past memories with them towards the end.
I really enjoyed the story all though it is not action packed. My only problem with the story is that is was often confusing as it jumped from life to life, I had to pay very close attention or re-listen often to figure out what was going on. It may be less confusing in written form. I was also left wondering at some of the changes in her lives that she did not cause such as the adoption of a certain baby, did someone else in her family also repeat lives and change things or was it just a random happening. The ending of the book left me a little disappointed as I am not sure what was done to keep someone alive and also the very last sentences of the book were about a person who only had a few words mentioned about them prior and I never really understood their part in the story at all. It may be that I missed something that I would have understood if I read the book. I think the narrator gave a good performance. Over all I would rate my enjoyment of the book a 4 to 5 star but my satisfaction at a 3.

Did not want the lives to end

The story is kind of like an onion. Our heroine, basically, lives several lives at once. Surprisingly, the author manages to pull it off without much confusion or contrivance. Even more surprising, it works in audio form (credit goes to the narrator as well, who is quite good). I did not give it five stars only because, as another reviewer also mentions, there is one gratuitous event that turns what is a very believable bunch of lives into a fairy tale for a moment. The novel did not need that -- and it makes the book almost fail towards the end.

Still, I liked it. Particularly the fact that, even though the heroine is shaped by the events in her lives, she is -- at her core -- who she is in spite of that.

Have enjoyed all of Kate Atkinson's books. This one is no exception.

Not what I was expecting

The author is gifted in story telling, but whoever summarized the book failed. The book is about a Buddhist belief in that we are trapped in the samsara. However, it is a samsara over a single life time. If you like Hindu and Buddhist philosophy, then you will enjoy this book. If you are looking for The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August, then look else where.

Slow, then compelling, then tedious

The use of rebirth was a great device to move the story along as well as to develop other characters in the book. At first, I was afraid the story was becoming tedious because of the continual retelling of the protagonist's life, always starting from birth. But then the pace picked up, the plot took off, and the story raced along. I was hooked and had a hard time putting it down. Unfortunately, just after the half-way point--and yet another rebirth--I returned to my feeling that the book was becoming tedious and I just kept hoping for the story to wrap up and finish. All in all, I guess I give it a B-/C+. I liked the book. Nicely written. Good narration. Too long.