Life After Life

The global bestseller, now a major BBC series

By: Kate Atkinson

Narrated by: Fenella Woolgar

What if you had the chance to live your life again and again, until you finally got it right?

During a snowstorm in England in 1910, a baby is born and dies before she can take her first breath.

During a snowstorm in England in 1910, the same baby is born and lives to tell the tale.

What if there were second chances? And third chances? In fact an infinite number of chances to live your life? Would you eventually be able to save the world from its own inevitable destiny? And would you even want to?

Life After Life follows Ursula Todd as she lives through the turbulent events of the last century again and again. With wit and compassion, she finds warmth even in life’s bleakest moments, and shows an extraordinary ability to evoke the past. Here isKate Atkinson at her most profound and inventive, in a novel that celebrates the best and worst of ourselves.

Critic reviews

Kate Atkinson’s new novel is a box of delights. Ingenious in construction, indefatigably entertaining, it grips the reader’s imagination on the first page and never lets go. If you wish to be moved and astonished, read it. And if you want to give a dazzling present, buy it for your friends.

There aren't enough breathless adjectives to describe Life After Life: Dazzling, witty, moving, joyful, mournful, profound. Wildly inventive, deeply felt. Hilarious. Humane. Simply put: it's ONE OF THE BEST NOVELS I'VE READ THIS CENTURY.

Truly brilliant...Think of Audrey Niffenegger's The TimeTraveler's Wife or David Nicholl's One Day...[or] Martin Amis's Times Arrow...This is a rare book that you want, Ursula-like, to start again the minute you have finished.

Absolutely brilliant...it reminded me a bit of her first book Behind the Scenes at the Museum, which is one of my most favourite books ever.

What makes Atkinson an exceptional writer...is that she does so with an emotional delicacy and understanding that transcend experiment or playfulness. Life After Life gives us a heroine whose fictional underpinning is permanently exposed, whose artificial status is never in doubt; and yet one who feels painfully, horribly real to us.

Merging family saga with a fluid sense of time and an extraordinarily vivid sense of history at its most human level. A dizzying and dazzling tour de force.

Deliriously inventive, sharply imagined and ultimately affecting...Atkinson has written something that amounts to so much more than the sum of its (very many) parts. It almost seems to imply that there are new and mysterious things to feel and say about the nature of life and death, the passing of time, fate and possibility.. . [a]magnificently tender and humane novel.

Brilliant...more than just a terrific story about the impact of one existence on another. Atkinson can knock the socks off any rival in terms of skill and style...The tour de force of the book, though, is Atkinson's recreation of the Blitz...unputdownable

Stunned with tiredness thanks to Kate Atkinson's LIFE AFTER LIFE. Couldn't stop reading. Terrific novel, may be her best yet. So enthralling, so well written, so beautifully constructed. Really, I can't fault it. Will be one of my books of the year.

World events, reimagined characters and second chances told with warmth, wit and consummate skill. (Fanny Blake)

Absolutely love this

Beautiful, exceptional narration. Totally enthralled by the story, the idea and the execution of a wonderful book.

Good, but wow it drags on and on

Skip a bit, you won’t miss it, it goes on and on and on. Read on recommendation pf a friend who watched the show. Can’t fault the narrator

A mind altering book

What made the experience of listening to Life After Life the most enjoyable?

The trick to this book is to stay with it. It is 1910 and snow is falling and life starts. And starts again.Kate Atkinson is simply one of the finest writers today. This book is a literary wonder - earthed by beautiful characters and a solid English country home - and yet delving into the questions of life and time and choice. World War Two vividly evoked. Ethereal and captivating. Don't miss it.

a bit jumpy but well worth persevering

Would you listen to Life After Life again? Why?

Yes. A really interesting story line with great characters. Sort of like a choose your own adventure where you can go back and find a better ending, except the author is choosing the new story lines her self, time and time again.

What other book might you compare Life After Life to and why?

The book thief or The time traveller's wife for its unconventional story line

Any additional comments?

I read comments about how jumpy the story line was and that put me off a little bit. But you soon get used to it and I actually started looking forward to the story line jumping back in time again. A great novel that I thoroughly enjoyed.

Less profound than it claims

Struggled to finish it and was very annoyed by the end. I missed the wit and the comedy that interlaced so well through profound themes in Atkinson's other books.
Narrator had bad German pronunciation, but that will probably only irritate German speakers.