Cecilia Grayson

‘Life after Life’, by Kate Atkinson – review

issue 13 April 2013
Das also war des Pudels Kern! Everybody thought, ‘Oh, Groundhog Day,’ but they were wrong. Not that the pest-control man couldn’t have coped with a few marmots — he’d seen worse in his time. He’d been summoned because of an infestation of black bats.

*

Meriel’s confusion lay in the fact that she knew she had known a lot, yet suspected she also knew nothing. Her family couldn’t help with the contradictions surrounding her birth, nor with her multiple deaths. ‘It’s just déjà vu,’ her mother Emily said, or was it déjà lu? She hopped about from year to year, forwards and backwards (if only she’d keep still, the reader thought), gathering redundant adjectives. Her mother was always there, dwelling on her own childhood (cottage, puppy, God). After somehow surviving the Great War, Meriel had an astonishing number of experiences, which passed into the future with extraordinary speed, leaving Muriel surprisingly brave. What unsettled her was marriage to a complete nutter (Meriel didn’t mind too much about anachronistic language), but this was soon swept away by the Blitz.

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