Life After Life by Meghan MacMillan

82 Book Review >>> Meghan MacMillan Life After Life

Atkinson, Kate. New York: Reagan Arthur Books, 2013. 527 pp.

“History is all about “what ifs.”

In her novel, Life after Life, Kate Atkinson takes this approach to history, to explore as many ‘what ifs’ as she can through her main protagonist, Ursula Todd. Born on a snowy February night in 1910, Ursula, the third child of Sylvie and Hugh Todd, dies before she can even take her first breath; the doctor had not made it in time to deliver her. On that same February night, the doctor arrives in the nick of time and Ursula begins a life that will end, as all lives do. But in Ursula’s case, she will always begin again. For, every time she dies, she is born again on that same snowy evening. As a child, she drowns, she falls from a rooftop, and she succumbs to the Spanish flu— but all in different scenarios. Atkinson addresses these scenarios in each of her ‘lives.’ What if someone had been at the beach when she was young to save her from drowning? What if she was stopped from climbing onto that very rooftop she had fallen from? Ursula does not have memory of these previous occurrences. Instead, she gets feelings of déjà vu and feelings of fear that she cannot explain. The Todd’s housekeeper, Bridget, travels to London to celebrate the armistice at the end of the first World War but brings influenza back with her, spreading it to the Todd family, including Ursula. Every time she returns to that day, she knows she must do something to stop Bridget, but she doesn’t know why she feels that way. It takes many tries (and many deaths) until she is finally successful when she pushes the maid down the stairs, breaking her arm. This is the first time Ursula is sent to Doctor Kellet, a psychologist who is the first to bring up the concept of reincarnation to her. As Ursula ages, her lives become more complicated and she begins to deal with events ranging from rape and murder to everyday things such as choosing a career and falling in love. Ursula’s life takes on different scenarios each time she is resurrected. For instance, she falls victim to a bombing during a blitz. She is working to find survivors from that very bomb site in another life. She ends up living in Germany and befriends Hitler’s wife, Eva Braun. Then, of course, she is in the inner circle of none other than Adolf Hitler himself. Through all of this, Atkinson brings to light questions of fate—how being in the wrong (or right) place at the wrong time can impact not only one life, but potentially the entire world. Atkinson is never obvious when it comes to these small moments because they should remain as they are: small, seemingly unimportant details. She explores the idea that these moments are what really matter, and how clear hindsight really is. The reader slowly becomes able to look for these clues, every action, every conversation is suddenly monumental. Atkinson shows that everything you do is important; yes—fate can exist—but we

have the power to change it. While this big, existential question hangs heavily over the whole novel, Atkinson uses the Todd family as a means to bring the story down to earth. Whether it is from the ever dependably snobby Sylvie or a kind word from Ursula’s father Hugh, the reader is able to connect with the characters. Atkinson is sure to include breaks in the drama with details of a family dinner, or a conversation with Ursula’s sister, Pamela. It serves as a reminder that Ursula is a human being, and it allows the reader to make connections and empathize with such an unusual character. The book itself, with all of its reverses and rebirths, has the potential to be strange and confusing. Atkinson seems determined to avoid this by providing structure; she labels each section with a month and year, so the reader knows what context to expect in terms of the story, as well as the history itself. We know that Ursula is dying when ‘darkness falls’ and the section ends. A new life always begins again with snow on the eleventh of February, 1910. Since Atkinson repeatedly arrives on that day in February so often, the potential is there for the rebirths and the other repeated dates throughout the book to become tedious. Instead of rehashing the same introduction each time however, Atkinson provides different points of view and slight changes to the story. Sometimes Hugh is there on the night of Ursula’s birth, other times he is still away in France. At 527 pages, Life after Life is full of stories—each one full of heartbreak, complex characters and within the context of war, so it is almost impossible for the reader not to feel overwhelmed. Especially during sections like the one where Ursula is working on a rescue team during the London Blitz (which graphically depicts the bombing victims encountered by Ursula’s team), Atkinson creates characters with such emotion and liveliness that they feel as if they are real people. It is a rare gift for an author to be able to make secondary and even tertiary characters feel so fully formed and multidimensional that a reader forms an attachment to each of them, no matter how small their part in the story may be. The story itself is made up of these small, emotionally charged parts. The parts flow outward, limitless in their possibilities. Even after the story ends, it does not feel like it ends. Life after Life feels less like a book than it does an ever changing being, almost as if it is a life itself.