This week’s Book Review takes a look at Life After Life, by Kate Atkinson

Life After Life, by Kate Atkinson, won the 2013 Costa Book Awards (Novel) and was shortlisted for the 2013 Orange Prize for Fiction and It was also selected as one of the 10 Best Books of 2013 by the editors of the New York Times Book Review

Its heroine, Ursula Todd, keeps dying, then dying again. She dies when she is being born, on a snowy night in 1910. As a child, she drowns, falls off a roof and contracts influenza. Later, she commits suicide and is murdered. She is killed during the German bombing of London in World War II and ends her life in the ruins of Berlin in 1945. Each time Ursula dies, Atkinson resurrects her and sets her on one of the many alternate courses that her destiny might have taken.

The novel is incredibly interesting, both with its attention to detail for life in the early 20^th century, to the unexpectedness that awaits with each new life that Ursula begins and how other characters in the story are seen from new perspectives.

It’s a book that leaves you thinking if such things could happen; alternate realities, the possible explanation for déjà vu.

With numerous awards, wonderful writing, brilliant storytelling, and exciting plot turns, this is a must have book!