Life After Life by Kate Atkinson

Life After Life or déjà vu

How many times in your life have you been close to death? What would the world be like if you could cause a bad thing to happen in order to prevent a worse thing? Kate Atkinson prompts the reader with these questions in Life After Life. 

Style and Tone

Written in an elevated tone in both language and content, the English writer, Kate Atkinson comes across as a modern Jane Austen on the page. Her elegant prose is a delight, heavy with descriptions, a literary weight that gets a little pretentious with itself at times, quoting famous literature, poetry, and slipping into French at times.

Plot

Ursula, the story’s main character,  is only vaguely aware that she is living the same life repeatedly, claiming to get a queer feeling of déjà vu when approaching situations that she has lived before. With the exception of an exciting opening scene, the novel is told in chronological order, Ursula taking center stage.

Until the first repetition happens in the plot, the progression of events feel almost mundane. The matter-of-fact point of view refers to Ursula’s mother as Sylvie, her father simply as Hugh, and gives each character their own unique personality. The story starts with Ursula being strangled by her umbilical cord because a doctor was late in arriving. We later get the same turn of events except the doctor arrives on time, cutting the umbilical cord around Ursula’s neck. Ursula’s childhood is dangerous, complete with a vivid and horrifying depiction of drowning, remedied later by a stranger who rescues her and yet another accidental death where she ventures onto an icy roof in search of a doll that her brother had thrown there. The  scenes are at first confusing, the repetition following without explanation, but soon the character becomes self-aware of these multiple realities.

While this strange reliving of Ursula’s life is interesting, it fades easily into the background of an intense character study. The book’s main focus in its characters, examining Ursula the hardest, but also putting the rest of the novel’s familiar faces through several possible scenarios to see how they might react. Slyvie seems for the most part to be a caring and supportive mother until one of Ursula’s realities puts her in a trying and unfortunate situation. The caring mother is gone and Slyvie’s cruelty is revealed until Ursula is able to rewind time once again, choosing a different path. One of Ursula’s siblings, a lovable and sweet character, dies first as a child, yet appears later as a dead war hero, remembered fondly by everyone.

Theme

Atkinson explores the concept of altering reality in many ways, having Ursula flail blindly in particularly important situations to prevent something terrible she feels but doesn’t quite know. It all comes down to this overall question for both author and the reader. The opening scene of the book depicts a satisfying scene where Ursula shoots an unsuspecting Hilter in a German bar, surrounded by people who adore and worship him. Full of cyclical double meanings and tragic undertones, the question still remains: can you prevent a worse thing from happening by making something merely bad happen?

Recommended Audience

Those who enjoy traditional English literature would love this novel despite its strangely metaphysical element. The book reads nothing like a modern science fiction novel, embracing a old-fashioned literary style. Since the novel takes place between 1910 and 1945, those who enjoy historical fiction might also find this read to be enjoyable.

If your life gave you a second chance, what would you do with it?