Life After Life

Imagine my joy with a holiday coming up and noticing on the bookshelves the new Kate Atkinson.

author of Life After Life, Behind the Scenes at the Museum.

I think that was her first one.

Death at the Sign of a Rook, one of her latest in her detective thriller type books.

But this is Kate, I think, back at her best.

She always thinks of it...

Oh, like Life After Life, Kate? Oh, not in it, no.

It's a much lighter novel than Life After Life.

Well, you know, I'll also tell you, I love what you just said about books finding us when we need them.

I was in Paris last week and there was a copy of Kate Atkinson's Life After Life.

on the shelf in the apartment that I was staying in.

And it came out 13 years ago, right? People love this book.

I think publishers are very overworked.

And so that there's less editing than ever before.

It was a treat to pick up Life After Life, a book that only came out, you know, 13 or 14 years ago, because it felt very solidly edited.

I'm very lucky that I have a great editor, but I read way too many books now that I'm like, oh, wow.

Um, yeah, some of those...

I mean, there are so many different parts of London to talk about, but yeah, just talking about that, you reminded me of there's some beautiful passages and tragic passages like that in, um, Kate Atkinson's "Life After Life," where sh- the, the protagonist is, you know, reincarnated multiple times and, and you're kind of living through these different lives.

And there's a whole section of that book that I remember very clearly where they're, uh, living through The Blitz and doing some similar things to what you just described, where they're, like, more raw immediately after some of the bombing, going and trying to dig people out of the rubble and everything.

But it's just crazy when you're...

And I know that that's something that we found really tricky with, uh, A Room Above a Shop, that it was really hard to tell the difference between dialogue, and that's such a skill, and some writers just have it, and Kate Atkinson is one.

I've not read all her books, but we both loved Life After Life.

Um, I loved Behind the Scenes at the Museum.

That's so good.

Yeah, I think so.

I think it's a shame when reviewers do that, actually.

I get it, they want to give you a point of reference so that if you're expecting a Life After Life or God in Ruins, it's not gonna be that.

But-