Book of the Week from We Love This Book

LIFE AFTER LIFE by Kate Atkinson The premise of Kate Atkinson’s new novel is: "What if you had the chance to live your life again and again, until you finally got it right?" On a winter’s night in 1910 Ursula Todd is born in the midst of a snowstorm, and promptly dies. On the same night in 1910 Ursula is born ­– and lives. As a child she dies several times in different ways, and each time her early years are revisited she experiences an unpleasant sense of déjà vu in each of the situations. But then the Second World War hits, and it’s harder to escape death in bombed and blackened London, especially when you’re a young woman assisting victims in the bombings. In the way that The Time Traveler’s Wife transcends the usually identifiable genres of fantasy and sci-fi, so does Life After Life. When reading it, you have the sense that you’re reading something almost too big to take in: it’s fate vs. free will; destiny vs. choice. It is, in a word, phenomenal. MORE