Narrative Temporality and the Power to Change in Kate Atkinson's Life after Life

Abstract

Narrative temporality is "the physical coordinates of the location and extension of the event and of its narration on the continuum of time" (Steinby, L. "Time, Space, and Subjectivity in Gérard Genette's Narrative Discourse". 2016: p. 579). Based on Gerard Genette’s model of time which stresses the two concepts of ‘story time’ and ‘discourse time’, the present study is an attempt to investigate Ursula Todd's self-realization of her power to change the course of her life in Kate Atkinson's Life after Life (2013). In his Narrative Discourse (1980), Genette maintains that story time and discourse time are distorted in their duration i.e. they are not the same. Genette calls this sort of playing with time ‘anisochrony’ (86). Temporal elements to be considered in the novel include 'order', 'duration', 'frequency', and 'time and status of the narrating'. The Goodreads Choice 2013 winner, Life After Life follows the numerous lives of an Englishwoman trying to get her own life upright through featuring non-linear timeline and replication of scenes from different points of view. The reincarnation of the protagonist in the novel is a quite selfaware authorial intervention. Through the novel’s temporal structure, Atkinson sharpens our awareness of what can be gained or lost when given the chance to experience one's life events more than once. TEXTUAL TURNINGS Department of English Journal of English and comparative Studies VOLUME 1, 2019 88 Narrative Temporality and the Power to Change in Kate Atkinson's Life after Life