- Little Brown
On February 11, 1910, an unusually snowy night for southeastern England, a baby girl is born with her umbilical cord wrapped around her neck. The roads are impassable; the doctor has still not arrived. She dies. But wait! On February 11, 1910, an unusually snowy night for southeastern England, a baby girl is born with her umbilical cord wrapped around her neck. Fortunately the doctor, armed with surgical scissors, was able to make it out before the roads were blocked. The baby survives. Her mother names her Ursula. And she lives quite happily until the summer of 1914 when she and her sister drown at the seaside, whereupon she (and we) return once again to that snowy night in 1910.
Atkinson doesn’t push the metaphysics of Ursula’s reincarnation too hard, which is probably a good thing; too much theorizing would spoil the story, particularly when she hints that Ursula isn’t the only one who has lived the same life multiple times. Instead, she turns the book itself into a palimpsest, writing one version of Ursula’s life on top of what came before. Part of the fun of the book is seeing the same events from different perspectives and watching Ursula approach them in new ways.
(This happened to be the second book called Life After Life that I read in 2013. The first was Dr. Raymond Moody‘s investigation into near-death experiences. Jill McCorkle also published a book called Life After Life that came out around the same time as Atkinson’s. My only New Year’s resolution is to read it to get a perfect trifecta of lives after lives.)
