Life After Life: Kate Atkinson
Apr. 1st, 2014 09:54 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
poliphiloI think of Atkinson as a young writer (not sure why- maybe because she's so playful) but actually she's only a few months younger than I am- and that's an age at which if a person is planning to produce a masterpiece they'd better get on with it. I've liked her earlier books but this, I think, is the one.
It's a disconcerting novel. Our heroine keeps dying- and every time she does she comes back to experience the bloody history of the bloody 20th century from a slightly different angle. In several lives she's blitzed in London; in one she's blitzed in Berlin. In the very first chapter she shoots Hitler in a Munich coffee house. Want to find out why? Well, on 11 February 1910....
Atkinson describes the construction of the book as "slightly fractal".
Go on, read it.
It's a disconcerting novel. Our heroine keeps dying- and every time she does she comes back to experience the bloody history of the bloody 20th century from a slightly different angle. In several lives she's blitzed in London; in one she's blitzed in Berlin. In the very first chapter she shoots Hitler in a Munich coffee house. Want to find out why? Well, on 11 February 1910....
Atkinson describes the construction of the book as "slightly fractal".
Go on, read it.
