Life After Life (Atkinson)
Mar. 7th, 2025 10:48 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
cahnThree people recced this to me after I posted about My Real Children, and the library had it, and then I was dragging my feet posting about it but then hidden_variable posted comparing My Real Children and Life After Life (post has spoilers for MRC, no spoilers for LAL) so, uh, here we are.
The idea of this book is that Ursula lives her life over and over again -- though she seems to learn a bit each time. She dies as a baby, strangled by the cord wrapped around her neck. Then she starts over, and this time (how?) the doctor comes and cuts the cord, but then she drowns as a small child. Then she starts over, and falls off the roof. And so on. Ursula doesn't remember anything exactly from iteration to iteration, but she does carry with her some kind of emotional response to her previous lives, so for example the next life after falling off the roof, she decides that going on the roof is a Very Bad idea.
I found the book fascinating as well as often rather hard to read (emotionally speaking). At some point I started flipping forward to find the next time that Ursula died so that I would know what I was signing up for in this iteration. (The life iterations do start getting longer once Ursula hits adolescence -- I guess there are more ways for small kids to die than there are ways for adults to die, although Ursula does manage to find a few.) The influenza section was particularly hard to read, because I guess it was just very likely for her to die from that, so there were a lot of lives, over and over again, where she would die from influenza, and often her siblings would too, and it just sucked a lot.
I thought about this book a lot after finishing it. I didn't get it on first reading, which frustrated me. (I'm still not sure that I get it, but at least I have thoughts on what's going on.)
I was really moved (and rather gutted) by the section where she has a daughter.
I got on first read in her next life that This is love, Ursula thought. And the practice of it makes it perfect. was the theme of the book. But it somehow went right over my head until later that she was purposely killing herself in that moment so that she could start over again and kill Hitler.
When she actually did kill Hitler, I thought, ah, okay, this is the point, this is the culmination of what has happened up until now, this is what it was all for. But then there was another do-over -- which frustrated me no end on first read, because I didn't understand what the point was if she was just going to do it again, and without killing Hitler this time, what was the point?
But the interesting thing about this do-over is that this time, it isn't Ursula who changes things, it's Sylvie. The narrative gives us yet another Ursula birth, and here again she is about to be strangled by the cord -- when her mother, who in the second version of Ursula's birth looked at the scissors the doctor cut the cord with and thought vaguely that she ought to buy such a pair of scissors in case of emergency, reveals that she actually has bought the scissors ahead of time and is able to cut the cord that she couldn't cut the first time around. Practice makes perfect. So maybe -- maybe Ursula isn't the only one who is being reborn, who gets to change things around? Maybe this is Sylvie's chance? And this is the history in which, somehow, Teddy lives (who was always Sylvie's favorite)... or maybe Teddy also has this power?
The only two things this theory doesn't explain are a) Teddy saying "Thank you" to Ursula in the penultimate scene (why? Especially if he or Sylvie are the ones driving that go-round? or did Ursula somehow manage to reset things in some way?) and b) the last scene, which is yet another baby-delivery scene riff where the midwife isn't able to make it to the delivery -- what is going on there? Anyone know? Or is the idea just "these different lives keep going round and round"?
Anyway -- well -- I will say that this is a hard book to read if you have any sensitivities around child death (I don't particularly, and I still found it hard to read in that respect!) but I liked it and it definitely made me think!
hidden_variable posted comparing My Real Children and Life After Life (post has spoilers for MRC, no spoilers for LAL) so, uh, here we are.The idea of this book is that Ursula lives her life over and over again -- though she seems to learn a bit each time. She dies as a baby, strangled by the cord wrapped around her neck. Then she starts over, and this time (how?) the doctor comes and cuts the cord, but then she drowns as a small child. Then she starts over, and falls off the roof. And so on. Ursula doesn't remember anything exactly from iteration to iteration, but she does carry with her some kind of emotional response to her previous lives, so for example the next life after falling off the roof, she decides that going on the roof is a Very Bad idea.
I found the book fascinating as well as often rather hard to read (emotionally speaking). At some point I started flipping forward to find the next time that Ursula died so that I would know what I was signing up for in this iteration. (The life iterations do start getting longer once Ursula hits adolescence -- I guess there are more ways for small kids to die than there are ways for adults to die, although Ursula does manage to find a few.) The influenza section was particularly hard to read, because I guess it was just very likely for her to die from that, so there were a lot of lives, over and over again, where she would die from influenza, and often her siblings would too, and it just sucked a lot.
I thought about this book a lot after finishing it. I didn't get it on first reading, which frustrated me. (I'm still not sure that I get it, but at least I have thoughts on what's going on.)
I was really moved (and rather gutted) by the section where she has a daughter.
I got on first read in her next life that This is love, Ursula thought. And the practice of it makes it perfect. was the theme of the book. But it somehow went right over my head until later that she was purposely killing herself in that moment so that she could start over again and kill Hitler.
When she actually did kill Hitler, I thought, ah, okay, this is the point, this is the culmination of what has happened up until now, this is what it was all for. But then there was another do-over -- which frustrated me no end on first read, because I didn't understand what the point was if she was just going to do it again, and without killing Hitler this time, what was the point?
But the interesting thing about this do-over is that this time, it isn't Ursula who changes things, it's Sylvie. The narrative gives us yet another Ursula birth, and here again she is about to be strangled by the cord -- when her mother, who in the second version of Ursula's birth looked at the scissors the doctor cut the cord with and thought vaguely that she ought to buy such a pair of scissors in case of emergency, reveals that she actually has bought the scissors ahead of time and is able to cut the cord that she couldn't cut the first time around. Practice makes perfect. So maybe -- maybe Ursula isn't the only one who is being reborn, who gets to change things around? Maybe this is Sylvie's chance? And this is the history in which, somehow, Teddy lives (who was always Sylvie's favorite)... or maybe Teddy also has this power?
The only two things this theory doesn't explain are a) Teddy saying "Thank you" to Ursula in the penultimate scene (why? Especially if he or Sylvie are the ones driving that go-round? or did Ursula somehow manage to reset things in some way?) and b) the last scene, which is yet another baby-delivery scene riff where the midwife isn't able to make it to the delivery -- what is going on there? Anyone know? Or is the idea just "these different lives keep going round and round"?
Anyway -- well -- I will say that this is a hard book to read if you have any sensitivities around child death (I don't particularly, and I still found it hard to read in that respect!) but I liked it and it definitely made me think!
no subject
Date: 2025-03-09 05:54 am (UTC)The very last scene does imply to me that things just keep going around forever, with the idea of being stuck in the snowstorm: “we’re not going anywhere tonight.” That actually sounds horrible, if Ursula has to keep living over and over and trying to kill Hitler every time. Although maybe the switch to an outsider POV implies that the rebirth stops happening to Ursula and moves on to someone else?
Also, did you know Atkinson has another book, A God in Ruins, which is... not exactly a sequel, but a related book about the same family? That one focuses on Teddy.
no subject
Date: 2025-03-10 05:11 am (UTC)Although maybe the switch to an outsider POV implies that the rebirth stops happening to Ursula and moves on to someone else?
I think so? I also think the scissors thing is meant to imply that Ursula isn't the only one, or that it's stopped happening to her. ETA: I also agree that it sounds horrible if she has to keep living over and over again!
I did see that there was another one! I will have to check that one out :D
no subject
Date: 2025-03-14 05:17 am (UTC)I was kind of confused about that as well. My impression was that maybe in that particular lifetime (when Teddy thanks her) she hadn't killed Hitler? Because there clearly had still been a war, and Teddy was still in the RAF. But she did definitely save Nancy, so maybe the thanks was more for that?
I definitely think you're right that the scissors suggest Sylvie has the rebirths as well. I'm not totally sure whether the power has switched from Ursula to Sylvie, or whether multiple people can have it at once (whatever "at once" even means in this context).
no subject
Date: 2025-03-22 04:58 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2025-04-07 02:31 am (UTC)The section where she has a daughter is brutal. But the hardest part for me to read was the domestic violence section. I actually almost gave up on the book at that point, but I'm glad I persevered.
I was also puzzled by some of the same things you were, and others which I don't recall now.
(I missed this post until just now.)