LIFE AFTER LIFE; KATE ATKINSON

This is the third book I have read by Kate Atkinson and it's quite different from the other two, which had a element of mystery to them, a 'who done it.'  This one, however, is set in Great Britain, between 1910 and the 1960's.  It's a bit confusing at first when a few characters reappear after they have been killed off by Atkinson in an early chapter.  You think you have misread something until you realize she is telling the same characters life over and over until she gets it right, including some of the details from the previous retelling, thus some characters reappear, some are killed off, even the protagonist in a couple of narratives.  At first the reverses seem strange but after awhile, quite normal

Ursula Todd, born in 1910, dies in child birth, but reappears in the next chapter, having miraculously been saved, thus setting the narrative structure for the novel, the heroine dies, then is born again, having escaped whatever it was that threatened her, birth, the 1917 flu epidemic, a murder, a suicide, the bombings of London in the 1940's, or, as the book begins, the assassination of Adolph Hitler, in a
German Gashaus in 1933 as he starts his rise to power.  Events are told over and over, with greater detail, the people who die in one chapter may appear in the next.  She has boy friends, who die, then reappear in a later chapter.  Once you catch on, which I did finally after the first two chapters, the novel reads easily and well.  There's no mystery here, as in her other fiction, just the retelling of Ursula Todd's life and that of her brothers, two killed in WWI, her older brother, who makes it in big in business despite being the bully of the family, her mother, never satisfied with Ursula, and her father, always loving and understanding towards his 'little bear.

I liked it best for it's depiction of what it must have been like to live through the bombings of London in the early 1940's, as much of the story takes place at this time and Ursula has volunteered to be part of the Guard which are called to bomb sites to extricate any of the living, often a ghastly task.

The novel dies out in the late 1960's, with Ursula never having married but having survived, the cherished Aunt of her siblings children.  Not my favorite novel by Atkinson, as you get a little tired of the same events happening after awhile but still, it's lovely writing and interesting to a point.