Todd Family 1
Life after Life
by Kate Atkinson
In one instantiation of her life, Ursula Todd dies just moments after her birth in 1910.
Fortunately (for the sake of the novel), time seems to be cyclic,
so she and the rest of the world get many chances at life. At times, she partially
recalls her other lives, resulting in many consequences to history and her personal
development.
— Michael Main
So much hot air rising above the tables in the Café Heck or the Osteria Bavaria, like
smoke from the ovens. It was difficult to believe from this perspective that Hitler was
going to lay waste to the world in a few years’ time.
“Time isn’t circular,”
she said to Dr. Kellet. “It’s like a palimpsest.”
“Oh, dear,” he said.
“That sounds very vexing.”
“And memories are sometimes in the future.”
Life after Life by Kate Atkinson (Doubleday,
March 2013).