"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!