new kate atkinson book -spolier!

[firefly78]

i didnt like the twist. felt a bit cheated. loved the book though!

Harumph is all I can say to that ending. I thought maybe Viola would restart like Ursula. Anyone know what she's working on next?

I avoided this thread as I only finished the book today. Didn't see it the end coming at all.
I suppose it's a fairly well used literary 'trick'. It's more than a couple of decades ago that I read 'An Occurrence at Owl Creek' in school, and that was published in the late 1800's!
I enjoyed the book though, and truly loved Life after Life. But - oh! Teddy!

I was a bit blindsided by it, and can't work out if I feel cheated or that KA has pulled off a very clever trick. The difference from Atonement is that the alternative story stretches on for decades and forms such a large part of the narrative. I have found it very affecting I think because Teddy made me think of my own Grandfathers, both of whom fought in the war and then returned to very ordinary lives. My maternal grandfather never talked about it, my paternal grandfather not until he was in his late 80s and it transpired had also been in a situation which could have gone either way, and my dad might never have been born. My parents are of an age with Viola, and I with Sunny and Bertie - so it felt quite personal to me.

I'm sure I'll be thinking about it for the next few days. And I'm looking forward to reading it again with the knowledge of the ending.

Thought-provoking, haunting and resonate, I loved this book until the ending. While I understand what a similar twist added to the story of Atonement, I'm struggling to grasp what the benefit was here, even though I've read and re-read the author's note at the back of the book. The only reason I can think of for her doing it is that she wanted the reader to question where fiction starts and finishes...but how this fits with everything that's gone before I don't know.

Like ElkTheory, I'm going to pretend the end just didn't happen.

Anyone else disappointed this didn't make the Man Booker longlist?

It certainly deserved to be on the longlist, didn't it Southeast?

I wonder whether it was even considered :(

It really did, Duchess. I do suspect she sells too many books for the judges to take seriously as a writer, plus with the criteria changing re eligibility she had less chance of making it anyway, sadly.

Doesn't The Terrible Privacy of Maxwell Sim end with a similar device to that in Atonement?

I loved the book, hated the twist at the end

It just seemed un necessary, the novel stood on it's own merits that had me choked and emotional several times

I loved Teddy and Bertie

I saw the way a similar twist added to Atonement...in this book it seemed like a cheap trick

Hope - my memory is that the twist in Maxwell Sim is slightly different, but I don't want to give anything away for people who haven't read it!

Resurrecting this old thread as I've just finished the book and didn't really want to start yet another thread.

For me, the twist was just right. Having read LAL, I kept trying to place this version of Teddy's life into one of Ursula's stories, working out which of her many versions it fitted with (I think, from reading the author's post-script, the answer is none of them - it stands alone). It would have been strange to have Life After Life being the book that it is, and then the companion book being just a straightforward narrative with no trickery.

Kate Atkinson described these as "war stories", acknowledging that war stories don't just take place from 1939-1945 (or insert dates of chosen war), they spill out before and after because that is how life is. That's why I thought the "twist" was perfect for this book - it added much greater poignancy to the story. Was it the story of a young airman who lived, or one who died? What difference would that have made? What would life have been like for those who died so young, had they lived?

Really made me think.

I didn't really warm to Teddy. The book asks questions about the morality of war and I'm guessing it was a deliberate choice to make Teddy a quietly decent, fairly un-conflicted character. To me, he was rather priggish and annoying - always right, always understated, always tasteful. I much preferred Ursula's story in Life After Life because she was prickly and awkward and interesting. I didn't think Teddy was any of those things. I did find his story moving though, and I loved some of the other characters - Sunny in particular, and (unexpectedly) Viola.

I agree with you that the twist was in keeping with the ideas she had set up in LAL and so it didn't jar for me at all. Agree also that it was a method to explore the impact of the war on those that survived it and subsequent generations. I thought the character of Teddy was all the things you say, and it was shaped this way by what he lived through, but he could never communicate this to his loved ones, so his priggishness and self containment was a frustration to them. Also it served to contrast against his actions when his wife died, and complicates the idea of heroism and what it means to be a good person who lives a good life.

I felt it was very clever how she draws you into disliking Viola for much of the book and then shows you that scene from her childhood that instantly complicates your view. That was the bigger twist for me than the ending.

I think I started to like Viola because she annoyed Teddy so much. She was difficult but I kept thinking "Good for you, girl" :)

When is KA's new book coming out?

Reading this thread is making me nostalgic for some literary fare from my most favourite author

At first I was very disappointed by the twist at the end, What happened to the suspension of disbelief. Yes we knew it was a story, but..?
After time it began to feel very poignant-this is the life Teddy could have lived if he hadn't been killed.

I loved Teddy by the way, he reminded me of my Dad.

Viola, very self centered.

I am of Viola's generation. Loved the descriptions of the hippy type community she tried. Will have to re-read-I can't remember the incident from her childhood that explains some of her behaviour.

Witnessing her mum's death at the hands of her father??

I stepped round it but title does have spoiler in it.

I really didn't warm to Teddy at all, if anything I positively disliked him. The ending made me cross, I finished the book during the summer while on the beach and had a little sulk and glared at it. Yet months later, I am still wondering and thinking about Viola's son and the girlfriend he was meant to have a kid with and didn't and how she felt at that sort of emptiness in her life where he was meant to be. I found that small little bit of the story terribly moving. And depressing.

phoenix @ had a little sulk and glared at it. I've done that.

Yes I think he isn't meant to be straightforwardly likeable, hes a war hero, married his childhood sweetheart, cares for his grandkids...and yet that doesn't mean he is 'good'.

I just went back to look at the book. I had remembered that Nancy had a brain tumour and the excellent descriptions of her inner experience of that but had completely forgotten that Teddy finished her off at the end and Viola saw it. Its a few months since I read the book and I can see that those three pages are central to the story. Complex characters "We are not wholly bad or good".

God yes and you've just reminded me Satsuki the bit about marrying his childhood sweetheart - that was probably the biggest disappointed for me after really enjoying Life After Life , how lacking in passion and fire their marriage was after I was so worried about him coming back from the war alive. It seemed like they were just rubbing along not really being in love and both having shagged other people while apart, but perhaps I am being idealistic and that is what relationships are like.
I am keen to read more by her so I must have partly got over my sulk.

Yes I'm idealistic too and hated that! But I appreciated that she was trying to show the complexity of "happy ever after" and the impact of war on survivor's personalities and their choices and families.

Yes incogkneetoe I thought the book spun on that, Viola was so terrible to her children and brittle with her father, then you see that and realise it's all so complicated and sad, for everyone. She has no context for what she saw, and it affects her all her relationships. The line where he three wishes were all to have her children as babies again was such a killer. But I found the last part where she was an author and got into yoga really boring and it bugged me more than the twist!

Who resurrected this thread, you got me all excited about a new Kate Atkinson book?! I was straight on Amazon searching for it...