My favorite part about Life After Life so far is the language used by Sylvie and Ursula, especially when we get a glimpse at their thought processes for two main reason. One because their thoughts trains are realistically constructed and drift in ways so that I could see myself coming to the same conclusions that these two come to when faced with similar situations, and two, because both Sylvie and Ursula often have complex understandings of certain situations, but often do not convey they’re full thoughts on the matter, whether it’s because of the gendered restraints put on these women because of the historical time period or because Ursula isn’t fully conveying the mysterious de ja vu experiences to her family.

Because of the language Atkinson uses, I have conflicting feelings on Sylvie’s character. I think she’s complex and deeply intelligent despite the fact that she hasn’t had any formal education, and she has one of my favorite scenes in the book where she first refers to her friends gawking at the newborn Urusla as cooing doves and then she thinks about it and clarifies by saying something along the lines of “or more like the lesser species, the pigeon.” And while that line was a bit hostile and negative, it made me laugh out loud and sympathize with the monotony of her life when dealing with boring formalities and proper standards of behavior. The way that we understand her through her motherly actions and through her critical yet intelligent thoughts makes her seem like an Old Soul to me, especially because she had Maurice so young. However, I can no longer bring myself to like her as a character after her handling of the whole Howie incident. It just made me extremely frustrated to think that I understood her as a character through Ursula’s childhood to only be immensely saddened by how she treated Ursula when she came to understand what happened to her daughter. I’m loving this book so far, but my main criticism is how sympathetic and understanding we come to be about Sylvie’s complex life for her then to turn into a bit of an antagonist because of her mistreatment of Ursula, a character we’ve come to love.