Spine Crackers discussion

On a cold and snowy night in 1910, Ursula Todd is born, the third child of a wealthy English banker and his wife. Sadly, she dies before she can draw her first breath. On that same cold and snowy night, Ursula Todd is born, lets out a lusty wail, and embarks upon a life that will be, to say the least, unusual.

For as she grows, she also dies, repeatedly, in any number of ways. Clearly history (and Kate Atkinson) have plans for her: In Ursula rests nothing less than the fate of civilization.

Wildly inventive, darkly comic, startlingly poignant — this is Kate Atkinson at her absolute best, playing with time and history, telling a story that is breathtaking for both its audacity and its endless satisfactions.

Hey guys! I just found out that you can read the first 50 pages or so of this book for free on Goodreads!

If you go to the books goodread page on the left hand side under the cover art there is an option to "Read Excerpt". This is a good option for people who were on the fence about the book. :)

This book really makes you think of all the close calls you've had in your life! I know I almost had an incident in the ocean just like Ursula.

Also, I feel like the beginning of this book would be terrifying for people with young children. So many close calls that you have no control over!

It also makes you think about all the different paths your life could take with only one small change.

SPOILERS in this post!

I really liked discovering how the other characters in the book responded to the different iterations of Ursula's life. Sometimes there were big changes that had no effect on certain characters and other times small changes altered other charters. Teddy ended up being my favorite character.

A lot of the stories had the usual tropes you see on BBC but some of them were a little more unexpected. The portions of the story set in Continental Europe provided an interesting perspective, as did the portions where Ursula served on a rescue team in London. I thought the most exciting part of the story were the few times she encountered the murderer. The author really spread these encounters out so you had the opportunity to forget about him, almost completely, before he turned up again.

Another aspect that was really interesting was finding out where the story would pick up again after Ursula died. Sometimes it would pick up with the mistake that directly caused her death and other times it would pick up just before a pivotal even decades earlier. Sometimes this corrected a negative impact she had on other characters and sometimes it didn't. For example, it didn't correct her mistake of pushing Bridgett down the stairs. It was a awful thing but that event allowed her to better understand her situation and lead her parents to send her to therapy where she met the doctor who was so influential to her.

Thanks for hosting the group!