This book presented me with a dilemma. I couldn't put it down, but
didn't want it to end. In the end I had to sit up reading till I'd
finished it - and I think I'll have to read it again soon.
Ursula
Todd is born, during a snowstorm, in 1910. That much is given. Almost
everything else is... provisional, shifty, alternate. In the manner of a
video game, Ursula will die and the book will reset to her birth
("Snow"). So we have many versions of Ursula, living through the mid
20th century. We see her as a young girl, as a wife, a mother, an ARP
warden in the London Blitz. And we see alternate timelines for her
family, friends and lovers. These branch from one another, but the
characters and events remain similar and Atkinson uses the cumulative
effect of the different realities to tell one story. It's the most
quantum physics way of telling a story I've ever seen - the essence is a
kind of sum over all the alternates.
To take one very minor
example (with no serious spoilers) in a number of the timelines Ursula
takes a secretarial course at a college in High Wycombe. The instructor
is a somewhat sleazy type, but the details - or at least, what we're
told about them - are slightly different in the different alternates You
only get a clear picture of him by taking all the versions together.
Crucially, Ursula's response is slightly different each time and we only
get a complete picture of her by holding all the versions together, as
it were.
While Ursula's birth is (almost) the only fixed point,
there are other places the timelines converge - where events echo one
another - and as you become familiar with the alternates you begin to
anticipate these. Examples include the Armistice Day celebrations of
1918, Ursula's 16th birthday, a wartime encounter in the tearoom of the
Charing Cross Hotel in London, the bombing of a block of flats in
London. The events are recognisably the same, but also very different:
each time Atkinson adds viewpoints, changes characters' roles, turns
things round, completes her picture.
There is something of a
meta-narrative going on. In some of the timelines Ursula becomes
increasingly aware of having lived through the same events before. She
experiences flashbacks from her alternate lives (or perhaps
"flashsideways" since these are in some sense all going on in parallel,
and some are of events we haven't seen yet). She begins to anticipate
dangers and traps to be avoided. Her attempts to do so ("practice makes
perfect") are comic in some places, tragic in others. This builds (in
one timeline) to a determination not simply to sidestep immediate
dangers to herself and her family, but to intervene and change history
on a grander scale. While the resulting "what if?" may be something of a
discussion point - and a commercial handle - it isn't actually as much
of a central theme as you'd think - this book is much more than just a
clever idea, excellently realised (though of course it is that). Rather,
Atkinson uses her unconventional approach to tell an involving and
compelling story. In particular she has a real skill in conveying
character with a few words and in creating sympathetic, real yet flawed
individuals (Ursula's parents, Hugh and Sylvie, are one example - at
different time we sympathise with both - Sylvie left behind with the
children, as banker Hugh marches off to "adventure" in the Great War,
Hugh as she becomes prickly during the Second).
To a degree, I
think you could read the different sections of this book in any order
you want - the epitome, you'd think, of a book written to be consumed by
digital means (e-reader, iPad or whatever). However, I read it in
hardback and did a lot of paging back and forward in this book, to check
details, compare versions of the "same" events, and to work out how the
timelines fitted together. I have a nagging feeling that the paper
version was easier for this purpose as you're able to keep two or three
pages open together. The book comes with a stitched in ribbon bookmark: I
think that possibly two or three would be even more helpful.
The
only drawback (for me) - and it is a very minor one - of this book was
keeping track of all the children. Ursula has a number of siblings and
friends and they seem to be rather fecund. At times it can be difficult
to remember who is who.
In a postscript, Atkinson suggests that
she may write a companion novel, focussing on one of the characters. I
really, really hope that she does, as I'd love to be able to read more
about the very real world she creates, and the people in it. (She does
leave a few tantalising loose ends which would surely be developed?)
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