A kind of a Groundhog day, Life after Life follows the life of Ursula Todd and her family, until she gets it right. The novel begins in 1910 and moves back and forth in time as things happen to Ursula - until they happen the right way. She keeps learning from her mistakes and corrects them without completely realizing what she's doing and why. Not perhaps the most original idea ever, but you can trust Atkinson to make the story into something interesting and different. 
A lot of the story happens during WW2 in a way that seems strangely familiar. It's almost as if the book is a homage to Sarah Waters' The Night Watch - you can well imagine Ursula at some point working in the same office as the girls in Night Watch and they have most likely gone to the same cafes and passed each other on the streets, perhaps taken refuge in the same shelters during air raids. Atkinson's people are more upperclass - the Waters girls wouldn't hobnob with them, but the war would have made their paths cross in a way that would have been impossible during peace time. And there are several happenings that surely aren't coincidences but neither are they at all plagiarized. A tribute perhaps, an "inspired by" maybe - a copy, never.
Perhaps not the worlds most un-putdownable book ever, but Life After Life certainly creates the urgency of needing to now what happens next. Now we just wait for the next Jackson Brodie.
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