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Good morning. I recently read a novel which I have been recommending to my friends ever since- at least, to those friends who I know share a similar taste in literature. Kate Atkinson’s Life after Life is an astonishing succession of ‘lives’ of one character, Ursula, from the same starting point. One event changes and the narrative takes a new direction, until Ursula’s life comes to an end in a variety of ways, the darkness falling around her. Gradually, with Ursula, we come to realise she has an inkling of the possibilities that lie before her, and sometimes she has a little agency to prevent the worst of what might happen to those around her.

One reviewer of the book commented that what is so powerful about the novel is that although its structure does everything it can to highlight Ursula’s fictionality- because she exists, fleetingly, repeatedly, only in the novel- we as readers care deeply about her. She is real to us in all her manifestations. There’s something about her richly complex series of lives- life after life- which draws us in to the heart of her being. She exists for us apart from the series of events in which she is involved. In our imaginations she has a literary resurrection- life after life.

If you are a reader, you probably know that having a good book on the go is like having a friend who welcomes us back every time we meet. A novel can be life-enhancing and mind-expanding, the creation of one imaginary world offering us a new perspective on the created order in which we live.

Living God, thank you for the creative skill of writers who entertain and move us, offering our imaginations life after life.  Amen