Life After Life: A Novel

Search the sf award shortlists for 2013 and you will look in vain for this novel. It wasn't even submitted for any of the juried awards. Yet it is arguably the best sf novel of the year, and perhaps the best sf novel of the decade. The problem is, it wasn't seen as science fiction (the book did win one award, for historical fiction). It's the story of one woman's life during the twentieth century: surviving the flu epidemic of 1919, marrying an abusive husband, meeting Hitler in pre-war Germany, helping the rescue services during the Blitz. But these aren't all in the same life. Because the flu kills her, the abusive husband murders her, she attempts to assassinate Hitler, she is blown up in the Blitz, and every time she dies, she is born again and lives a slightly different life. The result is a glorious and enthralling account of the different ways a woman might experience the twentieth century as she slowly starts to become aware of the multiple lives she has led.   Kate Atkinson won a major literary award with her first novel, and has also written a series of highly regarded detective novels, but although there was a hint of time shifts in Human Croquet she had not really tackled science fiction before this book. The result is one of the most original and most beautifully written novels in the genre.