I was excited to devour
Kate Atkinson’s Life After Life as
the latest selection in my book club. It
got a lot of buzz in the media, but reviews were very mixed, as it seemed like
people either absolutely loved it or…didn’t love it. While I applaud Atkinson for the monumental effort
that writing a novel like this entails, I unfortunately was in the latter
category.
The title of Life After Life could not be more
perfect. Atkinson raises the question we
all sometimes wish we could answer. How
would you live your life over if you had a do-over? In Ursula, the main character’s case, she has
many do-overs, constantly reliving the same periods in her very British life
with changes (sometimes major and sometimes subtle). At the very beginning, she has the
opportunity to kill someone who, if he didn’t exist, would completely change
the course of history for the better.
It is very difficult to
write about Life After Life because
it’s incredibly hard to explain the plot. The reader (as well as Ursula) feels a
constant sense of déjà vu. For me, reading
this novel was bordering on a chore; the accordion-style dating of the chapters
was very confusing and made me constantly have to go back and forth to get
things straight. I was hoping that it
would all come together at the end and allow me to have an “A-ha!” moment, but
that never materialized. Instead, I was
left even more confused. However, you as
a reader might love it. Regardless of
your feelings, no one can dispute the fact of Atkinson’s ambitious undertaking
to put Life After Life together.
MY RATING - 2
