#LIFE AFTER LIFE BOOK BY KATE ATKINSON HOW TO#
It was almost as if the author didn't know how to make the story end.įor me, the central storyline (by this I mean the wartime period, which was the strongest theme in the book) and the reincarnation / time travel concept did not work well together. I was left somewhat confused by the ending, in which the narrative style altered and the plot was almost summarised, events happened with no time reference, and the final chapter seemed to have fallen out of the beginning of the book somewhere and put back in the wrong place. The discussions they had often felt very forced, put there in order to explain to the reader what was happening to Ursula, whereas I thought they were unnecessary. I wasn't convinced by the scenes in which Ursula spoke to the doctor. For some, particularly Sylvie and Izzie, their personalities changed quite drastically sometimes, and particularly their attitudes towards Ursula became sometimes unexpected, and out of character. The other characters in the book were varied and interesting. I would have loved to have learnt more about Teddy's experiences, and wondered if the book would have been better if he had been the protagonist instead of Ursula. The wartime years felt so much more realistic and genuine, with the way it affected the other characters in the story as well as the protagonist. The other events described were domestic by comparison, and nothing out of the ordinary. The parts of the book dealing with the war were the best and the writing was excellent, and I really did feel that this would have been a much better book if it focussed solely on that. She didn't evolve as a person, which is a shame because other than the fact she kept coming back, I wouldn't class her as remarkable. Can so many bad things happen to one person? Did they make her return as a stronger peson? True she never repeated the same mistake, but I didn't see any change in her personality. In the years she was growing up, Ursula was put into some very bad situations that again brought about the end of her life.
It told us nothing about the main character. I was very glad that as the book progressed, we weren't taken back to 1910 every time she died.
I began to think that the character of Ursula just wasn't particularly good at staying alive, and hoped that there was one good reason why she kept coming back (and presumably that every other character travelled back in time somehow, but that's another argument I won't go into). It almost seemed lazy writing (this isn't a criticism I upheld for the whole book). When the tragedies started introducing themselves in numerous inventive ways my enthusiasm for the story started to wane. My enjoyment of the story peaked and troughed. But the overriding premise introduced complications that, for me, didn't work and detracted from what would otherwise have been a great piece of historical fiction. If this book had been a straightforward book about a character called Ursula, her upbringing and experiences during the war, I would have enjoyed this story a lot more. There was a great sense of place, and memorable characters - often if I read a book with a large cast I can find it difficult to keep track of who is doing what, but I had no such problem here - some of the descriptions were wonderful, and there were nice shades of humour throughout, which I think a story such as this is much in need of. I will start off by saying that I really like the way Kate Atkinson writes.