Life After Life by Kate Atkinson

What if you could kill Adolf Hitler?  That's the question presented in Life After Life by Kate Atkinson.  Ursula the heroine repeats her life several times.  This isn't Groundhog Day by any means.  Life After Life touches on the age old question, what would happen if you did get to go back over and over to get other aspects also "right"?  Life After Life presents us with those questions, to be a victim or not, to save others whose lives we touch or by saving one losing another.  This is the web of life and death. 

Life After Life answers that question, What if you could kill Adolf Hitler, would you?  Of course you would, except how does this touch your life in other ways? Do certain events have to happen in your life to give you the courage to kill someone else?  Do you have to love deeply and wish to protect others to be willing to kill?

A book worth curling up with on a cold rainy Victoria weekend.  Read it from end to end in one sitting. You won't be disappointed. 

Boy, Snow, Bird by Helen Oyeyemi

A step-daughter who is coddled so much that she may end up never knowing or be allowed to develop into herself.  A woman who ran away from home and abuse.  A daughter who shatters a secret.  A grandmother who isn't biological but acts like a grandma, another who is biological and doesn't acknowledge her grand-daughter.  Girlfriends who have your best interests at heart.  Fathers who aren't what they seem and husbands who love their wives. 

All this and more is beautifully intertwined in Boy, Snow, Bird by Helen Oyeyemi.  Set in the 1950s to 1960s this is the story of three women. Boy who runs away from home and becomes mother to Bird.  Snow, Boy's step-daughter, whose own mother is dead and her relationship to the women in her life.  And finally, Bird, Boy's daughter, and how her birth shatters a secret and sets everyone free from lies and secrets that they have kept.

This book presented such an interesting premises and was so beautifully written I read it fairly quickly.  I wanted to know what was going to happen. This is the first book I've read written by Helen Oyeyemi and I plan on reading her other books based on how much I enjoyed reading Boy, Snow, Bird.  A beautifully written deep story about love, kept secrets and truth. 

It has been two years since I've written about what I am reading.  Since then I've read two new Flavia De Luce mysteries and am awaiting another one to come out in paperback.  Six books were originally to be in the series.  Since a TV series is now in production for British TV Allen Bradley has decided to write a total of 10, or so I've heard.  Which is a plus for readers who love Flavia!  If you haven't read the series your missing out on some fun reading.  I don't want to give anything away regarding the books due to enjoying them so much.  I want other readers to discover the wonderful writing and be as enthralled with Flavia as everyone else who has read these books.  There is a Flavia de Luce fan club if that is any indication of how much this character touches readers.

So dear readers of this blog, go to your local bookstore, find Allen Bradley's books on the shelf, curl up this summer and travel to the English country side.