A difficult review to write. I’ve usually been able to review books I have undoubtably enjoyed, some more than others. This one caught me by surprise. To say that it’s interesting is rather anticlimactic and possibly avoidant. At the same time I would not stop myself from reading through this book. My preparation besides reading the book? Listening to the discussion this afternoon at my book group.
An ordinary family in Britain leads many lives. Ursula, the protagonist, is often the person that experiences these lives in ‘Life after Life’. To read it literally, from time period to time period, it can leave one wondering ‘why bother reading’ and better yet ‘why bother writing it’. And yet over the pages and chapters, the question ‘what if’ still hung in the air, answered with different scenarios. To understand it literally, it often felt like a disjointed series of vignettes.
Another perception I had, not shared by the group, was that it seemed a picture of the way mental illness was misunderstoond and pushed aside in the mid 1940’s from the inside world of the protagonist. In discussion today, there were reminders to me that some of the protagnoist’s ‘different lives’ were accompanied by a memory from prior life. It allowed the protagonist to change her behaviour to fit a new life, or to question a current outcome.
Finally, the story was played out in the war years in Britain with graphic and brutal reality, ending following the war. These scenes were of the citizens of London and not the soldiers, the Home Guard that picked up their neighbours bodies along with great chunks of buildings.
Would I read this book again? Definitely. The nuances, layers and characters in this book are many and fascinating. Is this story merely answering the question ‘what if?” or is there more to this story?
“A story has its purpose and its path. It
must be told correctly to be understood.”
~ Marcus Sedgwick
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