Kate Atkinson scooped the Costa Award for her bestselling novel Life after Life — the story of Ursula Todd, a girl who gets to live her life many times over.
The idea for the novel is an interesting one. Ursula’s various incarnations take place during the first part of the twentieth century and the earlier sections of the book are strong with Kate Atkinson holding the reader’s attention as she develops Ursula and a cast of supporting characters.
The time period included the Second World War and despite Ursula’s involvement with Hitler and Eva Braun it is in the war sections that, for me at least, the novel became a little bogged down with the result that I was glad to get to the end of its 544 pages.