I loved the premise of this book, and was engaged and involved from the very first page. At every point in our lives, as heroine Ursula Todd discovers, chance, choice, the choices of others or happenstance govern the path our life follows. Kate Atkinson explores those possibilities, re-telling aspects of Ursula's story time after time as different paths are taken.

The book works well in developing this idea, and it works well as a family saga too, telling the story of her sister, her three brothers, her parents and aunt, who to a lesser extent have their paths re-cast too.

My only quibble came after 400 pages, when I found there were still 200 to go. I felt Atkinson had said much of what she needed to say, and that little was gained by extending the narrative. Her descriptions of blitz-damaged London were evocative and involving, whereas the latter part of the book, set in Germany, worked less well for me.

This is an original book, witty and thought-provoking. I'd recommend it even more heartily if it were just a little shorter. ( )

I’ve read most of Kate Atkinson’s books, but I didn’t rush out to buy this one, as the reviews all focussed on the “branching narrative” thing and made it sound as if it would be rather gimmicky. It is gimmicky, of course, but now I finally get around to reading it (the book club picked it for this month) I have to admit that Atkinson is a good enough writer to get away with being gimmicky. It’s a very professionally assembled historical novel that gives us — multiple — convincing pictures of what it might have been like to grow up as the daughter of a middle-class Home Counties family in the first half of the 20th century.

We move pretty seamlessly from a Forster-ish view of the Todd family in its idyllic outer-suburban retreat ca. 1910 to a Stephen Spender view of the London Blitz (plus additional graphic horror that no-one writing at the time would have put in, but which we need because most of us nowadays haven’t actually lived through that kind of experience ourselves). Along the way, Atkinson gets us to think about things like the position of domestic servants, violence against women, and the limitation of educational and career opportunities for girls, all without ever seeming to be pressing any obviously anachronistic buttons. (Atkinson is from a similar background and generation to me, and her knowledge about England in the first half of the century must come from much the same kind of sources as mine, so it’s perhaps not surprising that it all rings so true…)

I’m not sure if the “multiple lives” thing actually adds much, but perhaps it does allow Atkinson to play with a wider range of ideas and settings than might comfortably have fitted into a simple linear narrative. And it does raise some interesting ideas about the arbitrariness of the kind of small events that dictate how our lives will turn out, even if we ignore all the slightly silly reincarnation and déjà-vu and “what if I went back to assassinate Hitler?” stuff. ( )

This was not your typical time travel/time loop novel. Ursula doesn't wake up after every death remembering everything that had happened before. Instead, she gets glimmers of past lives - times when her life didn't end so well, choices that didn't go as planned. The specter of WWII underpins most of the story - Ursula lives through the bombing of London and the loss of her brother to war. Some of her lives are personally tragic, and others are tragic in a more situational sense. I was overwhelmed with just how devastating the war was to England (and indeed, not just WWII but the after effects of WW I). ( )

(2013)Very good time travel story without a time machine. Ursula Todd is born in 1910 and dies many times and always comes back to start her life again. She lives these lives with one final purpose, to kill Adolf Hitler before he becomes Chancellor of Germany and starts his march to World War. Each life prepares her for the eventuality. Finally she determines that that is the reason for her many lives and she plans and prepares for what she perceives as her fate. But in the end as always the past and future win and her fate is to die in the attempt.KIRKUS REVIEWIf you could travel back in time and kill Hitler, would you? Of course you would.Atkinson's (Started Early, Took My Dog, 2011, etc.) latest opens with that conceit, a hoary what-if of college dorm discussions and, for that matter, of other published yarns (including one, mutatis mutandis, by no less an eminence than George Steiner). But Atkinson isn't being lazy, not in the least: Her protagonist's encounter with der F?hrer is just one of several possible futures. Call it a more learned version of Groundhog Day, but that character can die at birth, or she can flourish and blossom; she can be wealthy, or she can be a fugitive; she can be the victim of rape, or she can choose her sexual destiny. All these possibilities arise, and all take the story in different directions, as if to say: We scarcely know ourselves, so what do we know of the lives of those who came before us, including our own parents and�in this instance¥our unconventional grandmother? And all these possibilities sometimes entwine, near to the point of confusion. In one moment, for example, the conversation turns to a child who has died; reminds Ursula, our heroine, ?Your daughter....She fell in the fire,? an event the child's poor mother gainsays: ? ?I only ever had Derek,' she concluded firmly.? Ah, but there's the rub with alternate realities, all of which, Atkinson suggests, can be folded up into the same life so that all are equally real. Besides, it affords several opportunities to do old Adolf in, what with his ?funny little flap of the hand backward so that he looked as if he were cupping his ear to hear them better? and all.Provocative, entertaining and beautifully written. It's not quite the tour de force that her Case Histories (2004) was, but this latest affords the happy sight of seeing Atkinson stretch out into speculative territory again.Pub Date: April 2nd, 2013ISBN: 978-0-316-17648-4Page count: 544ppPublisher: Reagan Arthur/Little, BrownReview Posted Online: Jan. 21st, 2013Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1st, 2013

I wanted to like this more than I did. The Hitler angle ruined it a little bit for me.

Overall it felt more like an experiment or a writing exercise that would have been better if it were shorter. ( )