"One could lose everything in the blink of an eye, the slip of a foot."

While reading The Bridge of San Luis Rey, I was also reading Life After Life by Kate Atkinson.  Ironically, both novels deal with those “if not for this” moments mentioned in my previous blog.  But Atkinson does not explore the lives of five people all taken at the same moment; her exploration is much more complicated.

From the book jacket:

On a cold and snowy night in 1920, Ursula Todd is born to an English banker and his wife.  Ursula dies before she can draw her first breath.  On that same cold and snowy night, Ursula Todd is born, lets out a lusty wail, and embarks upon a life that will be, to say the least, unusual.  For as she grows, she also dies, repeatedly, in a variety of ways, while the young century marches on toward its second cataclysmic world war.

Ursula’s life begins and ends, and begins and ends, over and over, and affects the lives of those around her, including the reader.  I enjoyed the way Atkinson drew the reader into the story.  Ursula and her family are not aware of what is happening, but eventually she understands.  The novel explores the idea of changing history: a person’s history, the immediate world, the world at large.  And what happens if someone has the ability to change history?  Do you take that chance?  For those of us addicted to Star Trek, we know all about the prime directive against changing any single moment in time.  This novel is not science fiction, but the idea is clear from one of Ursula’s first successful moments with her mother:  “Ursula opened her milky eyes and seemed to fix her gaze on the weary snowdrop.  Rock-a-bye baby, Sylvie crooned.  How calm the house was.  How deceptive that could be.  One could lose everything in the blink of an eye, the slip of a foot.  ‘One must avoid dark thoughts at all costs,’ she said to Ursula” (32).

“One could lose everything in the blink of an eye, the slip of a foot.”  There it is staring the reader in the face again; the age old conundrum.  Faced every day by each individual person, this idea takes on a new life in Wilder and Atkinson though eighty six years separate the publication of these two books.  Wilder exploring the idea of who controls our fate, and Atkinson pushing it a bit further, if we have the ability, do we use it?  At what cost?

Looking for a novel with a happy ending: a feel good ending?  Do not read this novel.  But if you are a reader like me, a reader who wants to be disturbed by what is read or at least pushed to think about unanswerable questions, read Kate Atkinson’s Life After Life.  Like The Bridge of San Luis Rey, this is a novel I will read again. 

Atkinson, Kate. Life After Life.  New York: Reagan Arthur Books, 2013. Print.