The Benn Diaries, intensely personal, candid and engaging as they are, rank as an important work of historiography

Quite apart from the brio of illuminating a life almost entirely free of boredom (another rarity), the collected Benn has some critical patches of postwar history recorded hot

Immensely readable and revealing

An archive of incalculable value

The best political diarist of our time

Merging family saga with a fluid sense of time and an extraordinarily vivid sense of history at its most human level. A dizzying and dazzling tour de force.

Deliriously inventive, sharply imagined and ultimately affecting...Atkinson has written something that amounts to so much more than the sum of its (very many) parts. It almost seems to imply that there are new and mysterious things to feel and say about the nature of life and death, the passing of time, fate and possibility.. . [a]magnificently tender and humane novel.

Brilliant...more than just a terrific story about the impact of one existence on another. Atkinson can knock the socks off any rival in terms of skill and style...The tour de force of the book, though, is Atkinson's recreation of the Blitz...unputdownable

Stunned with tiredness thanks to Kate Atkinson's LIFE AFTER LIFE. Couldn't stop reading. Terrific novel, may be her best yet. So enthralling, so well written, so beautifully constructed. Really, I can't fault it. Will be one of my books of the year.

World events, reimagined characters and second chances told with warmth, wit and consummate skill.

Startlingly brilliant...endlessly rich

Life After Life is to be applauded for its inventiveness, and for reminding us of lives vanished without trace or memory in the waste and monstrosity of war.

Atkinson, like Audrey Niffenegger before her with the similarly ambitious The Time Traveller's Wife, is a confident enough writer to bear her high concept along well above water level

Atkinson's great skill is in portraying the exquisite tapestry of [life] with warmth, humour and immense humanity.

one of the most innovative, pacy plots of any recent novel

Playful, intelligent and beguiling...Astoundingly accomplished

A profound read that finds light in the darkest times

If you enjoyed The Time Traveller's Wife, you will love this inventive fantasy from the author of the Jackson Brodie series...marvel at Atkinson's skill in carrying off this absorbing feat of imagination.

Atkinson's achievement is to convince the reader that being disorientated about exactly what has happened so far is acceptable and enjoyable...deftly constructed...The innovative narrative structure of Life After Life reasserts the best there is to hope for in human existence.

Hilary Mantel, a rival for the Women's Prize, once said that Atkinson "delivers to the populace its jokes and its tragedies as efficiently as Dickens once delivered his, though Atkinson has a game-plan more sophisticated than Dickens's". This is Atkinson's best book to date, and she is as worthy as Mantel for the Prize.

She never ducks the sorrows of loss and human cruelty but an optimistic exuberance keeps coming through...This is, without doubt, Atkinson's best novel since her prizewinning debut Behind the Scenes at the Museum...A ferociously clever writer...a big, bold novel that is enthralling, entertaining and experimental...I would be astonished if it does not carry off at least one major prize.

Atkinson packs a huge emotional punch...As with Martin Amis’s Time’s Arrow and Ian McEwan’s Atonement, she explores the kaleidoscopic paradoxes of 'what if'.

Life After Life would be very good even if it was simply about the troubles of an early 20th century family and followed a less ambitious, more linear path. Yet it is more than that: a novel that makes you think deeply about the forks of your own life, the truth about dreams and deja vu and the grander scheme of time itself.

Highly readable...her description of the Blitz is a tour de force.

Her very best...a big book that defies logic, chronology and even history in ways that underscore its author's fully untethered imagination...exceptionally captivating.

Electric..very special indeed...extraordinary...tangible and vivid...The paths are endless, but each so affecting that we long to keep this character alive and moving forward.

No writer alive makes for better company on the page—knowing, funny, and prodigally inventive… ..Literary and entertaining all at once, Atkinson is a sophisticated artist who also can keep you up well past bedtime, and that double-barreled talent is on display as never before in Life After Life.

Possibly Atkinson's biggest triumph

Atkinson imbues her family saga with a fluid sense of time and a vivid sense of history at its most human level. A dizzying and dazzling tour de force.

Eccentric and daring...incredibly inventive, and her tricks with time,space and reality are dazzling.

Brilliant...Frequently heartbreakingand entirely thrilling.

Marvellous...spellbindingly done.

There are a few books that are so enjoyable that you slow down when you’re reading them, trying to delay the inevitable moment of completion…a voice that is both idiosyncratic and wise, one that sees the world in a distinctive, dark, but oddly consoling way….One of the remarkable things about Life After Life is the way that formal experimentation is combined with a consistently involving plot…Atkinson’s name is conspicuously absent from the Man Booker longlist. I find myself wondering whether Austen would make the lists if she were alive today.

This is great

One of those fantastical novels that tells us more about the realities of being human than most realist novels do…the most thrilling and moving experience fiction has to offer this year.

Kate Atkinson's audacious novel plays a virtuoso game with the nature of fiction...her best book to date and a worthy winner of a Costa Prize.