~~Book Review: Life after Life ~~

--Originally written on 21 Aug 2015

 

So, I completed reading “Life after Life” by Kate Atkinson recently! I had ordered this book online,  without giving it much thought,   never having heard of the author, nor having read any reviews…..Going by its name, I had expected a gripping “after life” story or theoretically inclined prose on various experiences of people claiming re-birth etc., etc., but well, it was anything, but not that!!! 

 

I started reading this towards the end of May and after going through a couple of pages, with nothing mysterious happening, and the realization creeping in that it definitely was not an interesting mix of people recounting their re-births – I took a break from the book…Though I never stop reading a book, however boring it might turn out to be (exception of course being Mein Kampf), I had to keep this book aside…!  And well, meanwhile, I couldn’t just pick another book to read, since I had already started this one – Yeah, I am like that, eka-book-vratha, if you get what I mean!!  Then one fine day, late July, I finally dared to pick it up again!  And this time, to my surprise, I didn’t, to be honest, I couldn’t keep it aside at all!  Though the initial few pages were a bit ordinary, the book managed to impress me beyond my imagination!

 

I am not sure how many of you have watched 12B in Tamil. It was a movie about how the course of a guy’s life is decided when he, at a point makes it right in time to catch 12B or due to momentary ignorance, misses 12B (12B is a bus, btw)… To draw an analogy, in 12B, the catching/missing of the bus is that one turning point to showcase that, a decision taken at such points, mostly changes the course that life takes!

 

Life after Life, explores such various turning points in the life of Ursula (the main character), and each such different set of decisions, at different turning points leads to a different set of events happening in her life (also impacting everyone else involved) and ending in her death, eventually, every time! She dies at birth, she dies a small baby, she dies a young child, she dies an adolescent, she dies an unwed to-be mother, she dies single, she dies an abused wife, she dies in the London Blitz and on and on, and oh, she dies an old woman too!

 

As we read, there are many instances, where there is this sense of De Ja Vu of going through these experiences already… Most of the times, I just wanted to go back and re-read what had happened, when she(or even someone else) had taken a different decision at that particular turning point!  It’s confusing at times, but brilliantly written, with no loose ends, ending every time with Ursula’s death!

 

Someday, when I am totally free, I would probably sit and jot down each turning point and the set of decisions at each of those points 

 

Well, to put it in simple layman terms, Imagine a tree which has many main branches, and each main branches then have their own set of tinier branches, and then these second set of branches, have their own set of few more teeny-weeny branches and so on.. Right?!!? And now imagine an ant, trying to traverse through the tree starting from the root, has to dig its way through up from the root, encounters the first main branch, it can either take it to traverse to second set of branches or just ignore it and move forward on the main trunk to the next main branch and so on… get a picture? This book takes every single such branch of Ursula’s life & explores it till the end .i.e., until she dies!

 

Apart from the way the structure of the novel is woven, where we are taken through a course of her life till her death & again sent back to the same decision point with a different decision, leading through another course of her life, the novel also showcases , how certain events happening in her life are interlaced with London Blitz, Hitler times, Second world war etc….. 

 

All in All – I would recommend it to anyone, who has all the patience (it’s a huge book) to go through it and sometimes, even go back and forth, just to make coherent sense of absolute brilliant incoherence :)