READ: Life after Life

(I chose this book to end my reader's block. It took a while to finish, only because I wanted to do it slow. I looked up bestselling books for 2013, checked if this one is in our school library, and then checked it out. I was traveling and had to squeeze this book in. I needed it to last my 21-days'  vacation. So, I was save-reading it, if you know what I mean. Warning: there are a few spoilers!)

This book is about a girl, Ursula who has a condition that, whenever she dies she goes back to the day she was born and is born again. Kate Atkinson accomplishes to portray multiple life stories of this girl and is equally successful at spinning off those circumstances that lead to her many deaths. Some of her deaths happen during the Blitzkreigs. Some happen as childhood accidents. Every time she dies, she tries to change the way things were in her family and her friends circle. For example, through her intuition she saves the life of a neighbor's kid, who had been raped to death during her previous life.

Ursula also lives one of her many lives as a young woman who marries for love, but later gets abused and beaten by the same man who she married. Then she lives another one where we see her as one of the rescue team members in the London bombings. It seems that although she was reborn and led different lives, the paths she took in each one is comparable to an individual's struggle in a single life - going from stages of childhood innocence, struggle as an adult, and later death of family members close to you as you age yourself.

I was really looking forward to the conclusive chapters that would provide an explanation for Ursula's special lives. However, what Kate gives us is nothing. The end is so inconclusive. May be it is just me who did not understand. But at least, there is a happier ending.The readers are left to interpret what must have happened or what happens to her. But that might not be the point of the novel. She did other things in a brilliantly satisfying manner. 

It is an interesting read and a great portrayal of Europe, especially England and some Germany, of the period from 1911 to 1950s.