(Fred, that isn't a review.)
Fine. So:
Life After Life is a book I wouldn't have encountered without my book club, and - going to be honest - hadn't really heard of Kate Atkinson before it was added to the list. But that's the joy of a book club, and yeah, maybe it throws up more duds than gems, but every now and then?
I mean, it is really, really good. Intricate, complex, intelligent, the characters glow through the premise in a way that kind of reminds me of A.S Byatt. If I had to sum it up in a word, that would be "nourishing" - Life After Life a book that feeds your story sense, that builds a world, a family, a life (we'll come to that later) in a way that is just so satisfying. I'm not often a big fan of realist fiction (again, we'll come to that in a minute), but when it delivers, it triumphs - and this book is a triumph. It's just so well written. Yeah, I will quibble with the faint conservatism that pervades it, with the handling of some of the characters, or the tropes that are leaned upon - but my gods, it's well written and just good to read.
So, the premise is simply this: when the Ursula Todd dies, her life begins again from the start. While she cannot strictly remember her earlier lives, trace memories linger, allowing her to guide this 'replay'. This is the only fantastical aspect of the novel, and Ursula is not the only active agent: her fate is affected to some extent by chance, and the decisions of others. This premise offers quite some commentary in what it means to live our best lives, and how even the smallest decisions can send us on wildly differing courses, making us vastly different people.
But the real strength of Life After Life is not in exploring such questions - rather it is offering us a powerful vision of the various lives one could live in the first half of the twentieth century (limited, of course, by gender, class, sexuality and skin colour.)
[Mild spoilers below]
Versions of Ursula become pioneering women in government service, prevent murders and accidental deaths, live among the (relatively) smart set, suffer abusive relationships and backstreet abortions, and even become complicit in the crimes and horrors of Nazi Germany. Some timelines are comforting, others profoundly upsetting, but all - or almost all - are treated with real depth and delicacy. While Atkison makes a leitmotif of various scenes and scenarios, she is admirable in that she avoids that repetition becoming heavy and tiresome.
Indeed, one advantage of her approach in showing the multiple lives of a single protagonist is that she is able to capture the real horrors of something like the Blitz, as life after life ends in the bombardment of London - something that would be numbing if it were to happen to multiple characters with whom it would be difficult to develop the connection on has developed to Ursula and her concerns.
But who could resist having a knowing protagonist living through the first half of the 20th Century again and again, and not having at least a stray thought of "let's kill Hitler"? It is on this somewhat explosive note that Life After Life begins - and it is revisted again at a later point, despite being to my mind the weakest strand of the novel. While I can understand the motivation entirely - both in the novel and out of it - Hitler was not the sole antisemitic, warmongering demagogue of the period, and there are more effective ways of organising against, and preventing fascism than by shooting down a single man. We never got to see Ursula the activist - forging papers for Jewish refugees, destroying incriminating records, or putting her admirable talents to working with the Resistance. It felt, slightly, as though Atkinson felt the need to make a definitive statement against Nazism, but did not wish that aspect to overshadow the somewhat insular scope (middle class Britain) of the other time lines - and as such this most dynamic version of Ursula's life lacks some of the detail and care given to the others.
All the same, Life After Life is an incredible acheivement, and its greatest strength is in its nuanced, emotive portrayal of a family shown through dozens of different prisms. Well worth a read.
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