![]() True, it can be frustrating to be deep in the midst of one of Ms. It’s more like a narrative multiverse, in which different versions of Ursula’s life compete for the reader’s attention and keep a conventionally one-note story well out of reach. For Ursula the past and the present become intertwined in a way that is “nightmarish, as if her inner dark landscape had become manifest.” This is not mumbo-jumbo. “Life After Life” is full of mind games, but they are purposeful rather than emptily playful. She also seems to die at many different times during the book, only to reappear unscathed, as if mortal danger were only a trick of the mind. Ursula is the main character in “Life After Life,” but she appears in different, contradictory versions of similar events. “Life After Life” is a big book that defies logic, chronology and even history in ways that underscore its author’s fully untethered imagination. Atkinson’s wide-ranging body of work includes several novels that resemble mysteries, but she has never had the narrowly deductive mind to suit that genre. ![]() The same can be said admiringly of Kate Atkinson, whose latest novel, “Life After Life,” is her very best. In the midst of a secret love affair, Ursula Todd discovers that she is an excellent liar.
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