The mostly brief chapters, dated by month and year, keep us oriented amid the rapid chronological shifts backward and forward. And there are several relatively still points around which the whirling machinery turns. Sylvie, Ursula’s mother, remains dependably snobbish and caustic, just as Ursula’s free-spirited Aunt Izzie continues to provide shelter, help and the example of nervy rebelliousness for which such aunts are created in fiction and film. In several of her lives, Ursula attends secretarial school in London and travels in Continental Europe.
Kate Atkinson, author of Life after Life, winner of the the Costa Novel Award 2013. Her first novel, Behind The Scenes At The Museum, won the.
The first few reverses are startling, but after a while it begins to seem quite normal (if still pleasantly jolting) when a character who, we think, has left the narrative forever reappears in another guise or is seen from a new perspective. And the surprise of what happens is less intense than the unexpectedness of what doesn’t happen: what seemingly irreversible damage is repaired with the “delete” key.In theory, this narrative method should violate one of the most basic contracts a writer makes with the reader: the promise that what happens to the characters actually does (insofar as the author knows) happen to the characters. But it’s interesting to note how quickly Atkinson’s new rules replace the old ones, how assuredly she rewrites the contract: we will stay tuned as long as she keeps us interested and curious about what all this is adding up to.
Each tragedy continues to surprise and disturb us, even as we learn to expect that the victim will be all right in the morning. Inevitably, metaphysics creeps in. We travel and return to the psychiatrist’s office where Ursula’s parents take her, at age 10, for sessions in which the conversation touches on reincarnation and the nature of time.
Kellet suggests that the moody, spacey Ursula may be remembering other lives and asks her to draw something, she produces a snake with its tail in its mouth. “It’s a symbol representing the circularity of the universe,” the doctor explains. “Time is a construct, in reality everything flows, no past or present, only the now.”Atkinson is having fun with this, as she often seems to be in.
Contents.Plot The novel has an unusual structure, repeatedly looping back in time to describe for its central character, Ursula Todd, who is born on 11 February 1910 to an upper-middle-class family near in. In the first version, she is strangled by her and stillborn. In later iterations of her life she dies as a child - drowning in the sea, or when saved from that, by falling to her death from the roof when trying to retrieve a fallen doll. Then there are several sequences when she falls victim to the epidemic of 1918 - which repeats itself again and again, though she already has a foreknowledge of it, and only her fourth attempt to avert catching the flu succeeds.Then there is an unhappy life where she is traumatized by being raped, getting pregnant and undergoing an illegal abortion, and finally becoming trapped in a highly oppressive marriage, and being killed by her abusive husband when trying to escape. In later lives she averts all this by being preemptively aggressive to the would-be rapist. In between, she also uses her half-memory of earlier lives to avert the neighbour girl Nancy being raped and murdered by a child molester. The saved Nancy would have an important role in Ursula's later life(s), forming a deep love relationship with Ursula's brother Teddy, and would become a main character in the sequel,.Still later iterations of Ursula's her life take her into, where she works in for the and repeatedly witnesses the results of including a direct hit on a bomb shelter in Argyll Road in November 1940 - with herself being among the victims in some lives and among the rescuers in others.
There is also a life in which she marries a German in 1934, is unable to return to England and experiences the war in Berlin under the allied bombings.Ursula eventually comes to realize, through a particularly strong sense of, that she has lived before, and decides to try to prevent the war by killing in late 1930. Memory of her earlier lives also provides the means of doing that: the knowledge that by befriending - in 1930 an obscure shop girl in - Ursula would be able to get close to Hitler with a loaded gun in her bag; the inevitable price, however, is to be herself shot to death by Hitler's Nazi followers immediately after killing him.What is left unclear - since each of the time sequences end with 'darkness' and Ursula's death and does not show what followed - is whether in fact all these lives actually occurred in an objective world, or were only subjectively experienced by her. Specifically, whether or not her killing Hitler in 1930 actually produced an where the Nazis did not take power in Germany, or possibly took power under a different leader with a different course of the Second World War.
Though in her 1967 incarnation Ursula speculates with her nephew on this 'might have been', the book avoids giving a clear answer.Critical reaction The Guardian gave the book a positive review, finding it conveyed both the changing social circumstances of 20th century Britain, and the particular details of the character's day-to-day life, in addition to the pleasures offered by the narrative format. The Daily Telegraph likewise praised it, calling it Atkinson's best book to date. The Independent found the central character to be sympathetic, and argued that the book's central message was that World War II was preventable and should not have been allowed to happen.In 2019, Life After Life was ranked by as the 20th best book since 2000. It was written that the 'dizzying fictional construction is grounded by such emotional intelligence that her heroine’s struggles always feel painfully, joyously real.' Awards and honours It won the (Novel). It was shortlisted for the 2013, Book of the Year (2013), and the (2014).
It was selected as one of the 10 Best Books of 2013 by the editors of the, an (2014), (Zombie Selection and Finalist 2014), (Historical Fiction 2013), longlist (2014), Annual Award for Literature (2014).See also. film with a similar theme.External links.References.
^ Hore, Rachel (9 March 2013). The Independent (UK). Retrieved 27 November 2013. Clark, Alex (6 March 2013). The Guardian.
Retrieved 27 November 2013. Brown, Helen (22 Apr 2013). The Daily Telegraph (UK). Retrieved 27 November 2013.
Staff, Guardian (2019-09-21). The Guardian. Retrieved 2019-11-08.
Retrieved 2014-01-06. Mark Brown (26 November 2013). Retrieved November 27, 2013. Retrieved 6 June 2013.
Walter Scott Prize. 4 April 2014. Archived from on 15 April 2014. Retrieved May 27, 2014. New York Times (2013). Retrieved 7 December 2013.