“Life After Life” by Kate Atkinson – Immortality Revisited

The year is 1910, with the night being dark, cold and snowy. A girl by the name of Ursula Todd is born. Then, she dies. Then, she is born again.

And so begins the long and tumultuous life of an immortal. In the aptly-named book, Life After Life by Kate Atkinson, we are told the story of the afore-mentioned girl, whose power is obviously to live after dying.


In other words, she can and does die again, and again, and again, in a myriad of different ways. While at this points it seems as if it’s all fun and games, the great atrocities the 20th century holds in store are about to take place, and so it begs for the question: will Ursula’s unique power help to prevent those events, or at least, lessen their impact and bring humanity some kind of salvation?

I really liked this book, and for more than one reason. For starters, it brings a somewhat unique twist to the subject of immortality, which has been explored rather deeply in numerous works of literature. Simply seeing a normal person deal with the physical and psychological pressure of dying countless times and being reborn is an interesting thing and can even make you question whether immortality would be a gift or an eternal curse. After all, how many loved ones and family members could you handle watching die of old age while you remain forever young?

In addition to that, the historical aspect of the novel is a very welcome thing, especially seeing as how it helps the book to take on a certain dark and humorous aspect, entertaining the idea of one’s immortality actually impacting the flow of events.

In the end, I found myself reading the book not in hopes of learning more about the concept of immortality, but with the desire to see which direction history would take in this story. All in all, Life After Life is a very entertaining book and I highly recommend it to anyone out there who is interested in immortality, or at least when the concept is used in stories.

Kate Atkinson Personal site Kate Atkinson is an English writer born in York and awarded a master’s degree in literature from the University of Dundee all the way back in 1974. Like most authors, she had to take on a variety of different jobs to sustain herself, but nevertheless she did not let the writer inside herself be lost forever.