Finished: Life After Life (Atkinson) A very good book with a fascinating premise that kept me reading, wondering what would happen with each one of Ursula Todd's new lives! Ursula is born in February 1910 in her family home, Fox Corner, in England. She dies before she can even take her first breath, as the cord is wrapped around her neck. There's a blizzard about and the doctor had been unable to get there to help her mother, Sylvia. The next chapter immediately starts on the same day, with the same blizzard, yet somehow the doctor has made it to Fox Corner this time and is able to cut the cord away and save little Ursula. Ursula lives until she is nearly five years old with her mom, her father Hugh, her big brother, Maurice, big sister Pamela, and her baby brother Teddy. When at the beach one day, she follows her seven year old sister into the waves and drowns. We are immediately taken back to the snowy night in February 1910, where Ursula is born again. Each time we revisit Ursula's life, more details about each of the characters, and different events that have led them to where they are in their lives are brilliantly explored. In Ursula's third life, she has a bad premonition of the water and doesn't want to follow Pamela in at the beach. Is the hesitation enough for the nearby artist to look up and see them go in? Maybe so, since he runs in and saves them both. A couple of years later, Ursula falls from a window trying to recover a doll that her mean brother, Maurice (who never changes), has thrown onto the roof. In her next life, she is raped at the age of sixteen by a friend who Maurice brings home from school. Ursula is so sheltered, she doesn't even know what has happened or where babies come from. She is, of course, pregnant, and goes to her Aunt Izzie for help. Izzie takes her for an illegal abortion, and Ursula dies after that. In her next life, when she is confronted on the dark stairwell by he brother's friend, she kicks him and runs away. Ursula does not have memories of her previous life, but moments where she feels deja vu and knows that she must alter her behavior in certain situations for one reason or another. She has the deja vu, along with nightmares of death, so often, that she begins to see a psychiatrist who is an important person in her life, really the only one who understands her, and believes she is being reincarnated over and over. He doesn't share this with his young patient, but he does help her accept her feelings. Eventually, Ursula gets older and becomes very involved in World War II as someone who works in the government, recording information, and is part of a group who helps to dig people out of the various bombings. It's very surreal to her because in a couple of her previous lives, she has actually been killed by the very bombs she is now helping to dig people out of....many of the victims, people that resonate deeply in her soul because she knew them before, but doesn't know that. In one of her lives, her studies take her to Germany and she is actually friends with a girl who turns out to be Hitler's mistress! Ursula meets Hitler, marries a German man, and has a child who grows to be eleven years old before her husband is killed in the war and Ursula and Frieda, her child, are left desperately starving and freezing in Germany. Frieda is on her deathbed and the Russians are rumored to be fast approaching when Ursula gives her daughter a poison capsule and then takes one herself, ending their lives and the only German chapter of Ursula's life. The war still affects her family considerably, though, as both her younger brothers, beloved, kind, Teddy and charming, Jimmy, are both fighting for the British in the war. When Teddy's plane goes down in flames in Germany, and none of his fellow pilots see him eject, then the entire family mourns. Ursula is beyond distraught, but in this life, lives until she's 57 years old, where she is given a retirement party for her many years of service. She's been having blinding headaches, and soon after, dies again. Next thing we know, it's February of 1910 again and we see more snippets of her life, and a few changes in things that happened. This time, when Ursula is a child, her deja vu events turn to true memories and she has somewhat of a breakdown. Sent to a sanatorium, she has a few sessions with her old doctor and then formulates a plan. She patiently lives her life and goes back to Germany when she's older and re-cultivates her friendship with Hitler's mistress. In 1930, a comfortable part of his inner circle, she pulls out a gun at dinner and we are to believe that she assassinates him. We don't know for certain, though, because she goes to black when Hitler's men kill her in turn. It's February 1910 again, we see, again, several different snippets of what has happened in Ursula's life as she's growing up. In this one, the doctor doesn't make it there on the snowy night, but the mother learned (somehow) from watching the doctor cut the cord in the second life, and she takes out a pair of scissors and saves her own daughter! Anyway, we fast forward pretty quickly to 1945 and there was still a war, and Teddy's plane still goes down in flames in enemy territory, but in this life, his radio operators slaps a parachute on him and ejects him from the plane! He survives over a year in a prison camp before the war is over and he waits in a cafe in London to reunite with his girlfriend since childhood and his sister, Ursula! When Teddy sees Ursula across the room, he mouths "Thank You", but we don't ever really know what she did. Did she kill Hitler? If so, did one of Hitler's early minions take his place? Did she know the radio operator and tell him to save Teddy? The next chapter just starts back in February of 1910, so even if we assume that Ursula dies of old age in this one, then what will the next life bring? This was such a good, good book, and very well written! So clever! It bogged down just a bit for me during the bombing portions in England. Those chapters went on and on, but I can't really fault the author for that. It's still amazing to me that World War II isn't really that far back in our past. Anyway, I'm so glad I read this book! I think I'm going to read her book, A Good In Ruins. It is actually the story of Teddy and his war experience!!