Life After Life
Kate Atkinson · 2013
Ursula Todd is born in 1910, dies, and is born again. And again. Each life plays out differently; some end in childhood, one reaches Hitler's bunker. Atkinson uses the conceit not as sci-fi but as a way to write about fate, chance, and the weight of the twentieth century. The novel is compulsively readable in a way that serious fiction rarely bothers to be.
The case against
Reading the same birth scene a dozen times is the price of the conceit, and Atkinson charges it in full: snow, darkness falls, begin again. The Hitler material that opens the book turns out to be a framing stunt the novel barely cares to honor, and the rules of Ursula's returns stay conveniently vague to the last page.
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