The lead in this story, though, is her brother Teddy, who, having survived both childhood and the air war, is now disillusioned-“The whole edifice of civilization turned out to be constructed from an unstable mix of quicksand and imagination”-and suffering from more than a little guilt that he lives while so many others do not. Ursula Todd, the protagonist of Life After Life, returns, appearing from time to time at just the right moments, in the manner of a chorus. Transpose Ambrose Bierce’s “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge” to the skies over Europe in World War II, and you’ll have some idea of the territory in which Atkinson is working. Fresh from the excellent Life After Life (2013), Atkinson takes another sidelong look at the natures of time and reality in this imaginative novel, her ninth.
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