Like most people I met Kate Atkinson through her early books: Behind the Scenes at the Museum and Human Croquet. These books were award winners and much lauded. Later, much later, I found the Jackson Brodie stories and devoured as many as I could find, loving them all.
Recently I picked up a fairly old hardback, can’t remember from where, maybe the book basket at church. It was a Kate Atkinson book called ‘A God in Ruins’. I had never heard of it but it was a very good read. This is a Second World War story which has a double focus: a family at home, just getting on with things despite the threats from over the channel and a young man thrust into being a RAF pilot where the risks meant that death was more likely than survival. Kate Atkinson writes convincingly of how the one affects the other and this was a novel I enjoyed.
‘Life after Life’ is neither a prequel or a sequel to ‘A God in Ruins,’ instead it rather awkwardly runs alongside it, focusing on different characters. That’s fine but it also works with the conceit that each decision we make changes our life. Employing a sort of ‘sliding doors’ idea we cover the same period of life again and again, with inevitably different results. It is clever and must have been extremely difficult to manoeuvre and control whilst writing. However, it didn’t totally work for me. In situations like this, I feel that as the reader, it must be my failure but, maybe not.
I went onto the third Second World War book ‘Transcription’ with optimism but sadly I stopped halfway through. I picked up my third Cormoran Strike book by Robert Galbraith and couldn’t stop turning the pages.
As far as Kate Atkinson is concerned, I think I will return to her Jackson Brodie books.