Life After Life - BokDraken

Publicerades 13 december 2013 av Little, Brown and Company.

ISBN:: 978-0-316-17648-4

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?

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Björn recenserade Life After Life av Kate Atkinson

None

5 stjärnor

"Time isn't circular," she said to Dr Kellet. "It's like a... palimpsest."
"Oh dear," he said. "That sounds very vexing."

It starts with the protagonist dying as she's born in 1910; then it continues with her surviving only to drown at 4 years old; then it continues with her surviving that and dying of the Spanish flu in 1918; and so on and so on until she starts to become vaguely aware that she's repeating and starts trying to change it. At once a brilliant historical novel that gets to examine lots of different angles by starting over every few chapters (and loaded to the rafters with Austen references), and a clever story of saving yourself by understanding your own narrative. (Yes, Atkinson is a Buffy fan.) I used to be a big Atkinson reader, but she kind of lost me with the Jackson Brodie novels - they weren't bad, …

"Time isn't circular," she said to Dr Kellet. "It's like a... palimpsest."
"Oh dear," he said. "That sounds very vexing."

It starts with the protagonist dying as she's born in 1910; then it continues with her surviving only to drown at 4 years old; then it continues with her surviving that and dying of the Spanish flu in 1918; and so on and so on until she starts to become vaguely aware that she's repeating and starts trying to change it. At once a brilliant historical novel that gets to examine lots of different angles by starting over every few chapters (and loaded to the rafters with Austen references), and a clever story of saving yourself by understanding your own narrative. (Yes, Atkinson is a Buffy fan.) I used to be a big Atkinson reader, but she kind of lost me with the Jackson Brodie novels - they weren't bad, but cosy English detective stories bore me. Cosy English time travel-ish stories, though? Sign me up!