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Name of the father
New Zealand Listener
|May 24-30, 2025
Debut a restrained and compelling exploration of alternative lives.
When Kate Atkinson's Life after Life came out in 2013, it affected me deeply. It starts with a baby girl who dies straight after birth, but is repeatedly reborn. Each time she experiences a different life, depending on a whole series of chance factors, such as exactly where she's standing when a German bomb is dropped on London.
My son Patrick had died in an accidental fall in 1987, when he was 18. I found the concept of an infinite number of alternative lives enormously comforting; it meant that in slightly different circumstances, he could have gone on living.
The Names uses this concept in an even more powerful way. It begins in 1987, with Cora needing to register a name for her son. But why is she finding this so hard to do?
This story is from the May 24-30, 2025 edition of New Zealand Listener.
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