Mini-reviews: Life After Life (Atkinson) and Cross Stitch/Outlander (Gabaldon)

Life After Life - Kate Atkinson


February 1910. In the middle of a snowstorm, a baby girl is stillborn. End of story.

In another February 1910, the same baby, Ursula, is born and survives.

Life After Life is made up of numerous versions of the same girl's life, where one different choice will take Ursula's world in vastly different directions. Not exactly a reincarnation story, as whenever Ursula dies and is reborn, time is reset to the same starting point. But as the book goes on, Ursula starts to have a sense of deja vu, and her decisions are influenced by half-remembered versions of what happened in another time - a glimpse across to another leg of the trousers of time, to borrow Terry Pratchett's analogy.

Life After Life reminded me of a repeating poem, such as a sestina, with the same images and phrases recurring regularly, very beautifully written. The fact that the same character dies over and over again does not make for an easy read; you spend each section getting attached to the same family anew, and you know it cannot end well. Some segments were relentlessly depressing, and there was one point at which I wasn't sure if I could continue reading. Later, however, I was very pleased that I stuck with it. The version of Ursula's life in which she spent the early 1930s in Germany was absolutely fascinating, and led up to the most daring event of the novel. Unfortunately, each story finishes with Ursula's death, and resets back to her birth, so you never get to find out what happens next. Which is the real history, if there is one?

If you liked this, read: 11.22.63 by Stephen King, Kindred by Octavia Butler

This book came from: Laura, as a birthday present. (Thanks Laura!)



Cross Stitch/Outlander - Diana Gabaldon

Cross Stitch has been on my to-read list for several years, thanks to various bloggers' recommendations, but was rather daunting being over 850 pages long. It tells the story of a young English woman accidentally being transported back in time to 18th century Scotland. As she tries to find her way back to her own time, she falls foul of a monster of a man with a disturbing resemblance to her husband in the 1940s, and is persuaded into another marriage with the young and headstrong Jamie Fraser.

I was prepared to have a problem with Cross Stitch because adultery stories are a deal-breaker for me. I can't be havin' with them. But is it adultery (or bigamy) if your husband doesn't exist any more - or won't exist for over a century? Is the Doctor from Doctor Who a bigamist, if he's married more than once? For him time travel is no different from any other kind of travel - all his wives are out there somewhen. For Claire of Cross Stitch,time travel is not so simple. Even though by some freak she managed to hop across the years, it is no simple matter to hop back. Maybe she's stuck in the eighteenth century forever, and might as well make the most of it.

And one can't review Cross Stitch without touching on the subject of Jamie. Most of the reviews I've read about Cross Stitch (or Outlander) go a little bit swoony when writing about him. Yes, he is a very appealing romantic lead, just the right combination of reckless courage and innocent honesty, the sort of character I used to love reading and writing about a few years ago.(and even now I find I am not immune to his charms.)

Although I enjoyed reading Cross Stitch while I was reading it, for the first half of the book I didn't feel the urge to pick it up again when I'd put it down. It had an unexpected humour to it, and I found the idea of a 20th century nurse having to heal illnesses and wounds with 18th century medicine fascinating. But it is long and a little slow for a while. The pace picks up once Claire and the reader have found their way around the world of the past, and I raced through the last 500 pages in about three days. I'm not sure that I'm in any great hurry to continue with the series; it is a big commitment and this one stood quite well on its own. But I'm glad I read it, and the ideas and characters stayed with me after I'd finished the novel, and sometimes I found I would bring them with me into my other reading.

If you liked this, read: A Song of Ice and Fire by George R. R. Martin, Kindred by Octavia Butler (Again. Seriously. Just read that book. And I'll throw in 11.22.63 again for good measure. Both of these books need to be read.)

This book came from: Ryde Bookshop, Ryde, Isle of Wight.

Top Ten Tuesdays: Unreviewed books

I've kept this blog for three years now, but only in the last year have I been updating it regularly, posting reviews of most of my reading material - but not all. If I don't review a book, it doesn't necessarily mean that I didn't like it; on the contrary, there are several books I've loved so much that I just haven't been able to do them justice. In other cases, I feel that a review would be just an inferior rehash of the book's synopsis and a "This is great! Read it!"

Top Ten Tuesdays are a weekly blog feature held at The Broke and the Bookish, and this week the challenge is to list ten of the books we'd love to share with other bibliophiles, but which for one reason or another we haven't reviewed.



1. The Book Thief - Markus Zusak. The story of a little girl growing up in Nazi Germany. Narrated by Death. Beautiful, eye-opening and heartbreaking.

2. The Help - Kathryn Stockett. This novel has recently been turned into a film which is now (USA) or soon (UK) showing in cinemas. Three women in 1960s Mississippi unite to challenge people not just to accept "the way things are" but to really think about their attitudes towards race, primarily, as well as class and gender.

3. Good Omens - Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman. A Cult classic, written by two great names in modern fantasy, before they were really famous, Good Omens shows the bumbling efforts of Aziraphale (angel) and Crowley (an angel who did not fall so much as saunter vaguely downwards) to prevent Armageddon. Hilarious and quotable, with a brilliant cast of characters, Good Omens is fun to play "guess-who-wrote-which-bit" with. (Apparently even they aren't quite sure.)

4. Fingersmith - Sarah Waters. With deliberate parallels to Oliver Twist, this page-turner keeps you guessing and brings to life the murky underworld of Victorian England.

5. The Earth Hums in B Flat - Mari Strachan. A quirky family story set in 1950s Wales, told by an imaginative 12-year-old who takes it upon herself to investigate the disappearance of a local man, opening up more cans of worms than anyone could have foreseen.

6. Crow Lake - Mary Lawson. Another family story, this time Canadian. Not a lot really happens, to be honest, but it's a story with characterisation strong enough for that not to matter. A short read, maybe 200 pages or so, but one which really draws you into the family's world.

7. The Tales of Beedle the Bard - J. K. Rowling. Harry Potter fans will know of at least one of the fairy tales, as it is a critical part of the final novel. There are five fairy tales in all, simple but flawless - and one rather gruesome one! The book is enhanced by explanatory notes on each tale from Professor Albus Dumbledore himself, and his musings are typically whimsical yet philosophical.

8. The Company of Liars - Karen Maitland. The year is 1348, and a band of misfits travel across England, trying to avoid the Black Plague. Many are on the run, all have strange tales to tell, but can they trust each other? This book ended on a twist which led me to want to read it all over again, to see if the new knowledge would change the way I read it.

9. The Distant Hours - Kate Morton. Ms Morton has written three novels now, and has pretty well established a recogniseable pattern of family tales, linked through the generations. This doesn't mean her stories are formulaic, though. Far from it! The Distant Hours is a modern gothic tale with all the best parts of such a story: an old house, mysterious sisters bound together by their past, and at the heart of it all, another story.

10. The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency series - Alexander McCall Smith. This is a lovely, cosy series of books set in Botswana. Mma Ramotswe's cases may not be dramatic compared to a New York detective, but every one is taken seriously, because every case is important to the person who is asking for help. McCall Smith writes which such a love for the country and characters, and the series has a gentle, innocent feel to it that is hard to find in adult fiction nowadays. This is a series I go to for a light, feel-good read, and can easily get through one book in an afternoon or evening.