Life After Life
Ratings154
Average rating3.6
I haven't read Kate Atkinson before, I saw this in a bookshop and immediately the story concept grabbed me.
What if you could live life again and again, each time taking a different path. This is what happens to Ursula, from the moment of her birth where in one reality she dies immediately after her birth but in another she lives.
The book progresses with this concept, during one childhood day at the beach she wanders too far into the sea and cannot be saved. In another a local artist spots her and saves her and life continues.
I didn't find the book confusing. I found the childhood chapters slower than those during the early war years where Ursula has so many possible futures and each so different it made fascinating reading. I don't want to give too much away but the scenario with Ursula in Germany pre Second World War was brilliantly written.
The only problem I had with the book is when your entire concept is that whenever the lead character dies time resets itself and she gets another go how on earth does it ever end...the premise that Ursula could change the future for everyone is a great concept but it doesn't fulfil when time immediately resets again and her act is wiped out. And so you get the feeling the author could be writing forever and not ever would we get a final conclusion and that is the books only flaw. It didn't feel finished and that was a little frustrating.
I was really excited to devote some time over break to reading an adult book that was one every top 10 list of the year, but alas, it was not as I had hoped. The first 100 pages of the book were zippy, witty, and interesting, but the middle 300-400 truly plodded on. The last 20 pages zipped along again, but by that point I was too annoyed that I had invested that much time for 1/4 of a good book.
Would be better as a tv show (which I just learned there is one). I don't care enough about the characters to keep reading about the MC dying and living the same thing over and over again.
After hearing this one was similar to “The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August”, I knew I had to check this one out. The mechanism for the “life after life” affect took me a little while to understand, but made sense after a while. I didn't feel that I was able to connect with the main character by the end, leaving me withdrawn from the overall direction.
Ursula craved solitude but she hated loneliness, a conundrum that she couldn't even begin to solve.
It's not you, Life After Life, it's me.
Interesting concept; turned out to be different from what I'm expected, but it worked well. I did get a bit tired of reading ‘darkness fell' or the ‘snow' chapters :)
I am having issues. DNF at 284 pages.
I am so bored and the writing is just not for me. I tried to push through I really did!! I think I may succumb to where my heads at and just read romance and short serious books
gyakorlatilag halálra untam magam rajta. nem tudom, hogy lehet egy ilyen érdekes alapvetést ennyire unalmasan papírra vetni, de gratulálok hozzá.
I read the second novel in the Todd Family series first, and was wowed by it, and now I'm wowed all over again by this novel. So intricate and complex! No need to recap the plot, but this story of alternative lives and outcomes is masterful.
Heel graag gelezen. Super concept, maar was toch een beetje verbaasd door het einde. Ik dacht dat ik nog een hoofdstuk miste of zo...
After hearing this one was similar to “The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August”, I knew I had to check this one out. The mechanism for the “life after life” affect took me a little while to understand, but made sense after a while. I didn't feel that I was able to connect with the main character by the end, leaving me withdrawn from the overall direction.
Ursula Todd is born in the midst of a blizzard in 1910, not once, but many times, during the course of her life - living only to die and be born again, repeatedly, traveling many paths until she lives the life she was meant to live.
Kate Atkinson's writing is superb, and lyrical enough that it carried me through to the end of this book. The plot, however, left me floundering for weeks, trying desperately to claw my way to the end of this depressing tale. While the premise - reincarnation and destiny - is interesting, the execution left me frustrated.
The early chapters of the book are very short, as Ursula is born, dies, and is reborn again with rapid succession. With each successive life, she lives longer (in most cases) and is developed more and more as a character. The choppy format of the early chapters make it difficult to get attached to Ursula, but as she lives longer, it becomes more and more apparent that she lives a sad, depressing life. In addition, as a result of her continued rebirth, it's difficult to become attached to her, or to feel any real regret or sadness at her passing. Also strange is that, as often as you meet them throughout Ursula's life, her siblings never really become fully realized characters. As they move in and out of her life, these siblings play important roles in the paths she follows, yet they remain rather one-dimensional, as though Atkinson couldn't be bothered to spend the time on them.
The book was also a bit too meandering in its plot. Lives that led no where interesting or important wandered on for far too long, while lives that seemed to be leading somewhere ended abruptly, only to pick up again to follow another pointless path. Perhaps this was Atkinson's exploration of the capricious nature of fate, but it made for some rough reading. About 100 pages of this novel could have been trimmed and it would only have improved the quality. Forty of those hundred pages should have been the last forty of the book - the last few “lives” lived by Ursula were confusing and unnecessary to the novel.
All in all, the writing was exactly what you'd expect from Atkinson (wonderful), but the story itself was confusing, lifeless, and somewhat empty. A hundred fewer pages, a different ending, and more fully fleshed-out secondary characters would have resulted in a 4 star book for me.
(I received a review copy from the publisher in exchange for a review.)
I remember going to Half Priced Books and whilst looking through the clearance section I spotted this book for next to nothing. I am not exactly sure what prompted me to pick this book up, it's just that I've heard the author mentioned in the past and was merely curious. I haven't read historical fiction in a very long time and was wondering if I would like it these days, if I gave it a chance. Well, the verdict is in, historical fiction as a genre is really just not for me. That's not to say that this book wasn't good, it really was, it just wasn't my cup of tea and I will not be continuing with the series, nor will I be picking up anymore historical fiction in the near future. However, if you are a fan of historical fiction you might really enjoy this so give it a chance.
To begin with, Life After Life is about a girl named Ursula and her life, from birth and all the way through World War II. However, what's unique about Ursula is that she can get as many chances at life as she needs to finally get it right. I wasn't sure what I felt about this plot and since I am a person who doesn't like fantasy all that much, I wasn't the most excited about the fantastical part of her dying and coming back to the same life over and over again. However, I thought it was done well, even if it got a little redundant and I never really found out what happened in the end. I am not a fan of open-ended endings in books and this one had exactly that. The middle dragged on a bit and I felt miserable reading about all the horrors of war because it affects me a lot deeper than most. If you enjoy reading about all the terrors of war, you will probably like this book.
Secondly, the characterization is where this book shined. The main character, Ursula, it was a treat reading from her point of view because she always had that naive, creatively wondrous outlook on life and it added the much needed humor to an otherwise very serious and depressing story. The other characters got a bit mixed up for me because there were tons but a few did stand out and had their own little quirks and ways of looking at the world. If you want intense character development in your novels, you should definitely pick up this book.
Finally, the writing was beautiful, albeit a bit too drawn out for my liking. I thought that the book could have been reduced down to three hundred pages and that would have been a lot easier to stomach in my opinion. However, because the book is very atmospheric and paints a very vivid picture in my mind, I fell into a deep depression whilst reading this book and the ending didn't snap me out of it whatsoever. In all, if you like a very high amount of description in your books and like to see everything, exactly as it's happening at every moment, then you will really enjoy this.
In conclusion, even though I kind of enjoyed my time reading this book, I also felt extremely depressed and down for the duration of it. I was hoping the ending would lift my spirits back up but it didn't really succeed in doing that since it was so open-ended and I didn't get the answers I was so desperately hoping for. Fans of historical fiction who are not affected by human suffering and horrors of war deeply in their books, give this one a shot, I think you will really enjoy it!
Interesting concept. A bit of a Ground Hog Day/Time travel mash up. Most of the characters were likable, but as always there is usually something about Kate Atkinson's books that just doesn't sit well in my mind. I was pretty ok with most things in the book until the whole Third Reich/picnics with Hitler section. It was too Forest Gump (I kept waiting for Jenny to pop up and tell Ursula to Run!) and pulled me out of the story. From that point on I was mostly reading just to finish.
Also wish they'd cut the last couple of lives/do overs. I didn't think they really added much other than to add some confusions about what the correct direction Ursula's life was supposed to take.
Oh wow! This is one I'd love to re-read and see what I get out of it a second time but I still really enjoyed the first time through. I loved these characters (well...most of them) and Ursula's lives are so well-structured. I guess I that's what I want to say? It's very clever.
I might have given it five stars if not for the wonky comma usage, which I found very distracting, there should have been an editor to impose some discipline.
How would I be different if some small thing had happened differently? How would the whole world be different? If I had been in a slightly better way that day I found out I had to opportunity to attend high school in Wales, maybe I would have gone. If I had, maybe I would be dead already. Maybe I would be a millionaire, maybe a monk. Maybe... who knows? This whole book is built on that question: what would be different if one small thing were different. Atkinson writes a gripping and entertaining exploration of that puzzle.
Somebody owes me an explanation of why it is such a great idea to keep dull Ursula alive through all these pages.
It opens with a Tarantino-esque scene with our protagonist walking into a German cafe, ordering a streusel and shooting Hitler. Darkness falls, Ursula Todd's life is reset and we're back at her birth. From there it's like I'm the world's worst Choose Your Own Adventure reader killing off my protagonist at birth, drowning as a child at the beach or falling out a window in search of a toy. I'm starting to wonder how I managed to survive my own childhood.
It's a life defined by singular, unremarkable moments. A fall on a street corner, a painter on a beach can change the tenor of Ursula's life significantly. She even gains a vague awareness of having been here before, a sense of pivotal moments. Speculative fiction? Light sci-fi?
Kate Atkinson never bores with each retelling but I've finished with so many questions.
The main character of Life After Life, Ursula Todd, was born in England on February 11, 1910, and when she dies she is reborn to live her life again. The book follows Ursula, and her family, friends, and relationships as she lives her many lives, making small changes in each that have larger consequences. I enjoyed Kate Atkinson's writing style a lot – rich in detail, immersing you in the settings and period. Spanning both World Wars, this is not a light-hearted read, although Atkinson supplies occasional moments of dark humor. I found the book a little slow to get moving but compelling once I got into it. I was worried after the first chapter that the book's ambitions were limited but happy to find the opposite. It's an exploration of fate, choice and consequence, and one that I have found more interesting the more I reflect on it.
Enjoyed this interesting structure of showing “what if” one thing had happened differently, yet all these various paths somehow were in your memory.
