You must feel deep in your gut that not only has this belief cost you pain in the past, but it’s costing you in the present and, ultimately, can only bring you pain in the future. So how do we change? The most effective way is to get your brain to associate massive pain to the old belief. “All personal breakthroughs begin with a change in beliefs. If you desire change, you are going to have to step out of your comfort zone. And sometimes, you can look to inspirational books to create a positive change in your life. At one point, she experiences so much deja-vu of the lives she’s already lived that she’s institutionalised and ends up jumping out the attic window.If you want to change your life, you are going to have to do things differently. Aptly titled “The End of the Beginning”, chapter 26 marks the lead-up to Ursula experiencing more alterations of her life. But as her past lives start blurring together, she dies and is reborn back in 1910. But by the time she reaches the Blitz, Ursula experiences “a whole cascade of horrible deaths” including that of one of her younger brothers, Teddy, whose plane goes down during World War II.īy this point, Ursula has managed to survive up until 1967. Speaking to NPR in 2013, Atkinson agreed that Ursula “dies a lot in the first third of the book” – spoiler: there’s numerous bouts of the Spanish flu. Granted, a lot of awful things happen to Ursula before she reaches her happy ending. But Atkinson does eventually provide an ending – of sorts – and thankfully it’s an optimistic one. Technically, you could say that Life After Life has no ending, Ursula’s many lives act as mini-stories. But how does Atkinson’s novel end? The answer is complex.

This ultimately takes her through both World Wars and even an encounter with Adolf Hitler. This, it turns out, happens again and again, giving Ursula the opportunity to continuously be reincarnated and experience different alterations. But that same night, she is reborn and survives. Born to Sylvie and Hugh (played by Sian Clifford and James McArdle), Ursula’s first “life” comes to an abrupt end when she dies before even drawing her first breath. The long-awaited BBC adaptation of Kate Atkinson’s Life After Life is finally here, and sees Thomasin McKenzie star as Ursula Todd, the girl who has lived a dozen lives.

Life after life novel