"Life After Life"

[fiefoe]

I thought it would be an amusing and clever conceit, having a heroine who relives again and again, but Kate Atkinson really wrote a grisly WWII novel (and the part with the abusive husband was entirely hideous and unnecessary.) That said, it's amazing how quickly 500 pages went by, and the domestic drama was entertaining.

• (Birth:) A prawn peeled, a nut shelled.
• "Strictly speaking though," Hugh said, "can a house be a corner? Isn't it at one?" <> So this is marriage, Sylvie thought.
• the somewhat random embellishments the seasons brought with them - sun, clouds, birds, a stray cricket ball arcing silently overhead
• The silver sugar bowl... went shooting through the air, lumps of sugar scattering like blind dice across the green of the lawn.
• His widow hid the clock beneath her skirts, bemoaning the passing of the crinoline. Lottie appeared to chime on the quarter, disconcerting the creditors. Luckily they were not in the room when she struck the hour.
• Mrs. Glover.. was of the opinion that five senses were too many, let alone adding on another one.
• Jimmy's arrival had the effect of making Ursula feel as if she was being pushed away from the heart of the family, like an object at the edge of an overcrowded table.
• "The ghost of Escoffier is at your back today, Mrs. Glover." Mrs. Glover couldn't help but glance behind her.
• Ursula declined, fearing enchantment. They were the kind of clothes that might turn you into someone else.
• Sylvie's knowledge.. was random yet far-ranging, "the sign that one has acquired one's learning from novels, rather than an education," according to Sylvie.
• "I would say (life) was more of an endurance race," Sylvie said. "Or an obstacle course."  <> "Oh, my dear," Hugh said, suddenly solicitous, "not that bad, surely?"
• He prodded his enormous tongue, like an ox's, against the portcullis of her teeth.
• ("One day," Ursula said to Pamela, "my communion with our mother will consist entirely of the names of the great writers of the past," and Pamela said, "I think it probably already does.")
• Or a Catholic, or a coal miner or anyone foreign... The unsuitable males were legion.)

• Sandbags were being stacked along the bridge, being stacked everywhere, and Ursula thought it was just as well there was so much sand in the world.
• She could hear incendiaries clattering down on  a roof nearby, sounding like a giant coal scuttle being emptied. The sky was alight. A chandelier flare fell, as graceful as fireworks.
• Power obviously provided a peculiar kind of stamina.
• This was her new favorite game, deciding how the people she knew would have dealt with the Nazi oligarchs.
• There was something primitive about the human chain they had formed, passing debris in baskets from hand to hand, from the top of the mound to the bottom. They could have been slaves building the pyramids - or in this case, excavating them.
• Miss Woolf, on the other hand, was two pounds up by the time the Blitz started (playing poker).
• (On dates) they had found themselves at bombsites, like sightseers viewing ancient ruins.

__ "Time isn't circular," she said to Dr. Kellet. "It's like a ... palimpsest."
__ Pepper Engine / tongue press / standpipe