Life After Life by Kate Atkinson

Life After Life by Kate Atkinson

I selected this book as somewhat of a novelty.  Another book by a different author with the same title was released on the same day.  That's an unusual event in the publishing world. I felt it only fair if I was reading one to also read the other.  I loved Life After Life by Jill McCorkle and posted a review of it earlier.  I didn't enjoy Life After Life by Kate Atkinson quite so much.

Ursula Todd is born with her umbilical cord wrapped around her neck.  The midwife is stopped at the local pub due to a driving snowstorm and unable to make it to Sylvie Todd's bedside.  Each time we think the worst has happened to this baby, the author rewinds the tape, leading the reader down a different path where the doctor does make it through the snow, or the servant uses the kitchen shears to cut the cord to give Ursula another chance at life.

At pivotal points in a young girl's life, Ursula's choices are simply undone and her path reset to something different.  The new path didn't necessarily lead Ursula to a better place, only a different one.  Each turn became more tedious than the last. As a reader I often found myself lost and confused as to where I was supposed to be in the story.  There was an awful lot of rehashing of the same conversations and events. Boring!

I think this is an interesting concept for a story, however I began to feel like it was Groundhog Day, repeating itself over and over again.  Maybe I would have enjoyed it more if Ursula had been a likeable character, but she wasn't.  Maybe if her mother, brothers and sister had been more appealing I would have enjoyed the book, but they weren't.  I'm not one to stop reading once I start, but I'll admit I skipped alot of the middle hoping the end would bring redemption.  Unfortunately, it didn't.

Life After Life: A Novel by Jill McCorkle

Life After Life: A Novel by Jill McCorkle

I picked up this book for no other reason than I read an article about it in USA Today.  Another book by the same name but a different author was released on the same day.  It's highly unusual to have two books by the same title and then to have them both released on the same day must have had both of the authors in a tizzy. 

I am reviewing Life After Life by Jill McCorkle.  I plan to review Life After Life by Kate Atkinson at a another time.  Even I couldn't resist downloading them both at the same time. 

I chose to read Jill McCorkle's version first since it had to do with people living and dying in a retirement home.  I've always had an affinity to old people, striking up conversations with them in stores and doctor's offices.  With plenty of good stories to tell, I have ears to listen. 

So did Joanna, the hospice volunteer who held their hands and wrote down their stories in her journal.  A journal she kept that served to heal her own heart, her own life in her own way.  The residents of Pine Haven have been drawn together by their old age.  Sadie takes pictures of the residents, adds scenery of a place of they wanted to visit, creating a manufactured memory.  Stanley fakes his dementia and a love of professional wrestling believing it will help his son move on from a troubled past.  Rachel, from Massachusetts, comes to Pine Haven in North Carolina to be closer to a lover, whose memory she holds close. CJ is a young tattooed single mother, who washes the residents hair and polishes their nails.  And then there is Abby, a young girl who walks from her house, through a cemetery to Pine Haven where she finds sanctuary from the constant arguments between her magician father and self centered mother. 

McCorkle does a brilliant job of telling the story character by character, entwining each story together with a subtle thread, emphasis on the word 'subtle'.  I love a book that I can't figure out.  I never saw what was coming, letting out a gasp so loud the dog began to bark as if an intruder had burst through the front door. 

Life After Life is a story of life, the good along with bad, touching followed by hurtful, laughter and tears.  In other words, it has it all.