You know those times when you finish a book and think: “I’m not sure I know what that was about, really…”

Life After Life by Kate Atkinson is one of those books. I also liked it a lot.

In an attempt to convey some idea of what sort of story it is, as opposed to what it’s about, I shall first refer you to the back cover:

“What if you had the chance to live
you life again and again, until
you finally got it right?”

Which of course begs the question as to what “right” is, exactly. Be warned, the book will not join the dots for you: you’ll have to make up your own mind.

Yet again I say: I really liked this book. In fact, it’s possibly my favourite Kate Atkinson to date.

Returning to my attempt to convey some notion of the story to you, I can reliably say that this is a book about people, and one family in particular, the Todds, during a period between 1910, and I believe at latest 1967, although I think it would be fair to say that the main narrative concludes ca. 1945. The protagonist who gets to live this “life after life” is the Todd child born in 1910, Ursula, who experiences multiple, or more correctly successive, lifelines through two World Wars and the events between them. More than that I can’t really say without actually starting to relate the story—and I really think you’d enjoy it much more reading it for yourself.

So what was it I liked about Life After Life? I really enjoyed all the characters: I believe Kate Atkinson has a gift for capturing personalities and “the way people are” and she definitely hasn’t lost the knack in this book. I also really liked the way the multiple timelines create a sense of life as infinite possibility, with any number of small and seemingly insignificant decisions affecting the course of a life. And if you like books about the prelude to and experience of World War 2 as lived by everyday people, Life After Life will not disappoint.

There wasn’t really anything I didn’t enjoy about the book, but some readers may find the way the narrative weaves back and forward between the alternate timelines difficult to follow . I did myself, on occasion, but was enjoying the book too much to mind having to stop and think: now, which thread am I on here? I also believe it’s the kind of story where pressing pause from time to time adds to the reading experience. Also, by way of warning, that World War 2 material can be pretty bleak. Not unrelievedly bleak, but this is fiction that draws on real history and the Blitz and related events were grim. Definitely not a “heavy” read, but not a light or romanticised one either.

Do I recommend Life After Life? Yes, I do.

If you enjoy works of speculative fiction such as Audrey Niffenegger’s The Time Traveller’s Wife or Connie Willis’s Blackout and All Clear, or historical fiction such as Sebastian Faulks’ Charlotte Grey or Kazuo Ishiguro’s The Remains of The Day, you may also enjoy this book.

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Additional Information:

I read the UK Trade paperback edition, 477 pp, of Life After Life, published by Doubleday, an imprint of Transworld Publishers.