all of them drawn out with both an economy and with a refusal to fall to stereotype. Glover, Fred Smith the butcher's boy turned train engineer turned fire fighter in the midst of a burning London. Ursula becomes more and more like both of them, impossible as that seems. Her father, Hugh, grows increasingly more generous and less concerned with propriety. Ursula's mother, Sylvie, becomes both more possessed, but also more bitter. That's an admirable feat on it's own, but what raises it to an award-worthy performance is how each of these characters is given their own chance to grow and develop. Everyone - everyone - in this decade-spanning saga is given a character utterly distinctive and utterly believable. What might seem from casual description to be a difficult read is turned into a joy by Atkinson's skill with characters. Give it far enough, and it reveals itself for what it really is: a masterwork. A biography of a quantum life created as much from variation as theme.

She's swayed by the breezes both of external forces and, increasingly, of her own conscious decisions, turning each iteration of her life into a new edition that can follow closely along an established branch, or dart off wildly in a new direction.Īt first this looping narrative, filled with restarts, reworkings, do-overs and flashbacks, can seem something of a gimmick, but only follow Ursula far enough to get through her childhood and it becomes it's own thing. However, unlike the traditional view of this ancient idea, Usula's life doesn't proceed in eternal lockstep. Life After Life is based around an idea that's older than the classic idea of reincarnation, an idea known as 'eternal return,' in which we all play out our lives again, and again, and again in an never-ending loop. And of course, she is-a tree whose trunk is rooted in in the early hours of a snowy day in 1910, whose branches reach out through choices and coincidence, and whose leaves brush a future that spreads in all directions. At one point in Kate Atkinson's marvelously embroidered novel, main character Ursula Todd ponders reincarnation and decides that she'd like to come back as a tree.

Summary of life after life novel