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Life After Life (Paperback)
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Life After Life (Paperback)

(author)
£9.99
Paperback 624 Pages
Published: 30/01/2014
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Waterstones Says

This kaleidoscopic novel, which considers the many different paths one life can take, paints a portrait of the 20th Century like no other in an incredible feat of storytelling and imagination.

'...a box of delights.' - Hilary Mantel

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, Kate Atkinson finds warmth even in life's bleakest moments, and shows an extraordinary ability to evoke the past. Here she is at her most profound and inventive, in a novel that celebrates the best and worst of ourselves.

Publisher: Transworld Publishers Ltd
ISBN: 9780552776639
Number of pages: 624
Weight: 423 g
Dimensions: 197 x 126 x 38 mm


MEDIA 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. - Hilary Mantel

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. - Gillian Flynn, no1 New York Times bestselling author of Gone Girl and Sharp Objects

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. - The Times

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. - Marian Keyes (newsletter)

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. - Guardian

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. - Daily Mail

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. - Observer

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 - Evening Standard

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. - Val McDermid (Twitter)

World events, reimagined characters and second chances told with warmth, wit and consummate skill. - Fanny Blake, Woman & Home

Startlingly brilliant...endlessly rich - James Walton, Reader's Digest

Life After Life is to be applauded for its inventiveness, and for reminding us of lives vanished without trace or memory in the waste and monstrosity of war. - Literary Review

Atkinson, like Audrey Niffenegger before her with the similarly ambitious The Time Traveller's Wife, is a confident enough writer to bear her high concept along well above water level - Scotsman

Atkinson's great skill is in portraying the exquisite tapestry of [life] with warmth, humour and immense humanity. - Yorkshire Post

one of the most innovative, pacy plots of any recent novel - Psychologies Magazine

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. - Gillian Flynn,no1 New York Times author of Gone Girl, and Sharp Objects

Truly brilliant...Think of Audrey Niffenegger's The TimeTraveler's Wife or David Nicholl's One Day...[or] Martin Amis's Times Arrow, his rewinding of the Holocaust that was shortlisted for the Booker. Life After Life should have the popular success of the former and deserves to win prizes, too. It has that kind of thrill to it, of an already much-loved novelist taking a leap, and breaking through to the next level...This is a rare book that you want, Ursula-like, to start again the minute you have finished. - Helen Rumbelow, The Times

What makes Atkinson an exceptional writer – and this is her most ambitious and most gripping work to date – 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. - Alex Clark, Guardian

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. - Amber Pearson, Daily Mail

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“Perfection”

A truly moving and ingeniously woven tale. I'm still puzzled as to how Atkinson managed to tell the same story over and again without boring me once. The chapters set during the Blitz were some of the most... More

Paperback edition
Helpful? Upvote 82

“Slightly disappointed”

I do like to read books on review from people, but I was slightly disappointed with this latest novel from Kate Atkinson. Having read many of her other novels, I anticipated a brilliant read.
Whilst it was a good read... More

Paperback edition
Helpful? Upvote 80

“Bizarre & Brilliant!”

This book is a fantastic read although it can be very confusing at times which I believe is kind of the point to it. I'd definitely recommend reading it if you're looking for something different! Its not... More

Paperback edition
Helpful? Upvote 76

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