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

Not for my taste

Would you say that listening to this book was time well-spent? Why or why not?

I didn't feel like I ever got into this. It was a series life possibilities but I never got to feel like I knew the characters. Way too far fetched in some instances.

What was most disappointing about Kate Atkinson’s story?

Got a bit old and was easy to see what was going to happen as each scenario unfolded. The change of outlook prevented the depth of character development. Some scenarios were very brief and others contained so much detail that the story line (lines) didn't seem to run fluidly.

What about Fenella Woolgar’s performance did you like?

She was an excellent narrator. Did a good job of differentiating the voices. I will see what else she has narrated and if the subject intrigues me, I would certainly enjoy listening to her again.

If this book were a movie would you go see it?

no

Any additional comments?

Just not thrilled with this rendering of an interesting premise. I chose it based on other reviews - but we all don't have the same taste even if we read many of the same books.

What a surprise

Far more than any historical novel that I've read. Amazing. Imaginative. Addictive. I'm off to read her other books. Starting right away.

I Think I Missed a lot...

I liked this book a lot, as it's extremely well written and tells interesting stories about a likable character who has a wealth of interesting experiences over a lifetime beginning in 1910. But the book's structure frustrated me. Not because I got lost as one after another of Ursula Todd's many lives (and deaths) morphed into the next and time shifted accordingly, but because I expected to see more obvious connections and threads in and between her many stories, as one does in Colum McCann's "Transatlantic", the best book I've read in a while. As in "Transatlantic", where real-life characters such as Frederick Douglass and Senator George Mitchell make more-than-cameo appearances, Eva Braun and Adolph Hitler figure in an interesting story line in "Life After Life", adding to its appeal to me. Don't be put off by my three stars, which would have been 3.5 if I'd had the flexibility; try this one for yourself. Having read a number of reviews after finishing the book (the "Most Helpful" reviews currently on Amazon.com are very helpful), I realize that I probably missed many of the literary, religious and other allusions which others say lie under the surface of "Life After Life". You might not.

Worthy of all the kudos

What an astonishing writer Ms. Atkinson is. Paired with a marvelous and pitch perfect reader too. Found myself "rewinding the tape" - sometimes more than once - just to relish the prose and the performance. Three cheers!

thought provoking

The story was rich and complex. For those willing to go down the rabbit hole and ask "what if we could change the past?" it is both satisfying and infuriating. I only had a bit of difficulty keeping track of dates and where we were in Ursula's life, which would not have been a problem in a physical book. Yet the narrator was fantastic and her character voices made it as easy as possible to follow along in a time hopping story.