Becoming who we are meant to be can take a lifetime. For Ursula Todd, the heroine of the British writer Kate Atkinson's eighth novel, Life After Life (Black Swan, £7.99), it takes a lot longer. Mixing realist, science-fiction and historical genres, Life After Life tells and retells Ursula's attempts to save her family and, later, humanity from a host of untimely deaths. Using a time-loop plot device that spans the first and second World Wars, Atkinson kills off and resurrects her heroine over and over, resulting in an extraordinary journey of alternate paths that will change the course of history.
Eleven of the book’s 30 sections relate the day Ursula was born. The umbilical cord chokes her blue in one instance; a local doctor saves the day in another. A third re-creation sees mother Sylvie, herself no stranger to deja vu, use a recently acquired pair of surgical scissors. On a trip to the seaside Ursula the toddler drowns or is rescued by an onlooker. She falls out a window at home or is saved by an opportune call to tea. Her 16th birthday sees a pushy American’s advances rebuffed, or permitted to tragic effect.
Ursula’s propensity for living and dying continues apace in wartime Britain. Her adult self flits between realities: life with an abusive Casaubon, the cold and vicious Derek Oliphant; Ursula as an Everywoman hero of the London Blitz; the wife in a German family close to Hitler’s throne; a spinster civil servant. Her attempts to prevent the outbreak of the second World War warrant a move to Germany and a strangely plausible interlude up the Berg with Hitler’s mistress, Eva Braun.
The writing is sharp, at times very funny, and laced with fresh images of war: "Mr Palmer's body came apart like a Christmas cracker." Recent winner of the 2013 Costa Novel Award, Life After Life has an elastic chronology and unusual structure – certain days are revisited numerous times, with different perspectives and outcomes – that give a multifaceted view of the Todd family as they stumble and pick themselves up again in the face of circumstance. With a lesser writer the repetition could be relentless, the offering of multiple worlds an indulgence, a trumped-up backstory masquerading as narrative. But as Atkinson's previous work has shown – Behind the Scenes at the Museum and Emotionally Weird in particular – she relishes this type of unorthodox storytelling. By experimenting with form, she clearly renders intricate plots, rewarding the reader with a heightened understanding of the characters' desires.
From Sylvie’s favouritism of her children to the kindly Hugh’s efforts to hold his family together to the predator that roams the neighbourhood, looking for young female victims, we are given an access-all-areas pass to the Todd family. The ability to forensically analyse their choices, spot their mistakes and plot their downfalls imbues the reader with a pseudo-authorial knowledge that proves extremely gratifying.
