A life that could have been if not for the war. The fact that this is an imagined life is not revealed until the end. This clever structure is diminished by a story that drags quite a bit. ( )

A second visit to the Todd family from Life after life, this time seen from the viewpoint of Ursula’s younger brother, Teddy. Where the focal point of the first book was Ursula’s experience of a city under aerial bombardment in the London Blitz, we now go into the experience of the young men who had to fly bombers in the Allied campaign of mass bombing raids on civilian _targets in occupied Western Europe.

As you would expect from Atkinson, it’s a tour-de-force of research convincingly condensed into the personal experience of her characters. She doesn’t hit us over the head with military and aviation jargon, and she doesn’t attempt to rewrite Catch-22, but she gives us enough to take us into the — very technical — world of these quite ordinary boys (the average age was around 22) who found themselves facing extremely unpleasant working conditions with enormous risks, whilst uncomplainingly doing a job they had been told was essential to the project of defeating the Nazis, but which must have been extremely repugnant to most of them.

Of course, the central paradox of the book is that Teddy, having flown many missions and seen colleagues failing to return, and having reconciled himself to the statistical inevitability of an early death, finds himself having to live out the remaining three-quarters of a normal adult lifespan. This turns out to include having to deal with the cruelly early death of someone close to him as a result of the lower-probability but equally inevitable lottery of cancer.

As a complete novel, I felt this didn’t work quite as well as Life after life. Atkinson put so much work into getting the World War II part right that the other parts of the book felt a bit shallow, and she clearly let anger get the better of her when she was writing about the commune or the Villiers family. But there were still some lovely moments, like the part when middle-aged Viola gets caught up in a Saturday night of horrific hen and stag parties in York. Atkinson, even when off her best form, is still pretty good by most standards. ( )

Like its predecessor or companion volume Life After Life, this is mostly about the Second World War and its impact on society and people’s lives. This volume concentrates on the experiences of the protagonist Edward (Teddy) Todd as a pilot in Bomber Command. But we are also introduced to the lives and points of view of a number of people who are related to him: his parents, his sister Ursula (the protagonist of Life After Life), his wife Nancy, his daughter Viola and his grandchildren. The book ranges backward and forward in time, and plays with the idea of alternate histories, though nowhere near the extent with which Life After Life does.

Engaging and deeply moving, a meditation on the art of fiction. Beautifully written, like all of Atkinson’s work.

The fact that Atkinson is English and almost exactly my own age means that there are many experiences and references in the book which resonate deeply with me; perhaps less so for other readers. ( )

Quit reading, did not really speak to me, like other books by Atkinson (or I was not listening). ( )

I liked Life After Life a lot so was eager to read this companion novel featuring Ursula's brother Teddy. As I read the story, I was often a little bored and it was only "knowing" the characters from the previous book that kept me reading. And I hated the ending! It was confusing. There's a line about the story existing only in Teddy's imagination. What? Even worse, the book goes on to conclude with an excerpt from one of the Augustus stories. Who cares about Augustus? Not me.

As always with Kate Atkinson, the writing is beautiful. There were several times the events in the book really touched me. Most reviewers loved the book. It just didn't work for me. ( )