Her other children have mixed feelings about Ursula. She names her baby Ursula, which means she-bear. She reflects on all of this after her baby is born. Hugh is not poor, but neither does he have the wealth that her family enjoyed during her childhood. Her mother died not long after, and at the age of seventeen, Sylvie met Hugh. Her father had racked up gambling debts that eroded the family fortune.
Her father’s death turned her world upside down, and she and her mother lost everything. Before Sylvie and Hugh’s marriage, she had been a carefree girl. At this point, the reader still does not know the sex of the unnamed child. Fellowes does not care for her emotional outburst, and leaves early the next day to Sylvie’s delight. This is Sylvie’s third child, and she is naturally emotional, ecstatic that the child will survive. Fellowes arrives at that point and is able to save the baby. The baby’s heart stops beating, and Sylvie and Bridget presume the child has died. Sylvie’s baby is born, but the umbilical cord is wrapped around its neck. His sister has run away to Paris and he is trying to track her down. Winter weather keeps the doctor away so that the pregnant mother, Sylvie, is alone with her scullery maid, Bridget. The year is 1910, and a baby is experiencing a difficult birth. As is common with in medias res stories, Life After Life then moves backwards in time. The woman takes her chance, but fails, and everything goes black. The young woman encounters him, and he flirts with her, but she is not there for flirtation or to admire him.
With the clues Atkinson plants in the beginning of her novel, the reader soon learns that this leader is none other than Adolf Hitler. The point-of-view character, a young and unnamed woman, arrives expecting to see the supreme leader. Life After Life begins in 1930, at a party. By starting a story in medias res, an author can effectively hook a reader, and provide background information along the way. In fiction, there is a difference between the story, or plot, and the narrative arc. This term means that the novel begins in the middle of the story. Life After Life by Kate Atkinson begins in medias res.
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