Friday, June 20, 2014

Fiction: Life After Life by Kate Atkinson


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Life After Life by Kate Atkinson is the book that has busted my blahs.  It's been a while since I have grown so very personally attached to a character and I am attached to Ursula, the main character of Kate Atkinson's newest novel.  I am attached, hook, line and sinker, to the whole delicious idea of this story.  This book does much more than extrapolate  how an individual life would be different if that ONE thing were to change.  No, Life After Life explores the multitude of ways in which one moment, (and therefore, each moment) can be far-reaching beyond what one can imagine.  And once I understood how the plot was shaking out, I liked playing out each little thread and rooting for Ursula each time, right to the very end. 

For more detail, consider the summary below from the MORE online library catalog:  "What if you could live again and again, until you got it right? On a cold and snowy night in 1910, Ursula Todd is born to an English banker and his wife. She dies before she can draw her first breath. On that same cold and snowy night, Ursula Todd is born, lets out a lusty wail, and embarks upon a life that will be, to say the least, unusual. For as she grows, she also dies, repeatedly, in a variety of ways, while the young century marches on towards its second cataclysmic world war. Does Ursula's apparently infinite number of lives give her the power to save the world from its inevitable destiny? And if she can -- will she?"--Provided by publisher