The First Time Lauren Pailing Died

by Alyson Rudd

Paperback, 2019

Status

Available

Collection

Literary Fiction

Genres

Publication

HQ (2019), 384 pages

Description

'STYLISH, ALLURING, UTTERLY GRIPPING' Lisa O'Kelly, Observer 'WONDERFULLY INVENTIVE (COMPARISONS WITH KATE ATKINSON ARE INEVITABLE... I COULDN'T PUT IT DOWN'The Times 'LIKE NOTHING YOU HAVE EVER READ BEFORE' Red Lauren Pailing is born in the sixties, and a child of the seventies. She is thirteen years old the first time she dies. Lauren Pailing is a teenager in the eighties, becomes a Londoner in the nineties. And each time she dies, new lives begin for the people who loved her - while Lauren enters a brand new life, too. But in each of Lauren's lives, a man called Peter Stanning disappears. And, in each of her lives, Lauren sets out to find him. And so it is that every ending is also a beginning. And so it is that, with each new beginning, Peter Stanning inches closer to finally being found... Perfect for fans of Kate Atkinson and Maggie O'Farrell, The First Time Lauren Pailing Died is a book about loss, grief - and how, despite it not always feeling that way, every ending marks the start of something new.… (more)

User reviews

LibraryThing member AdonisGuilfoyle

Wow. Just wow. I read this in a day, and not just because I borrowed my copy from the library! I'm still thinking about the characters now. One of the blurb reviews, I think, compares this to the film Sliding Doors, but the plot is much trickier than that.

When she is thirteen years old, Lauren

Pailing dies for the first time, but then wakes up in hospital. Everyone and everything in her world is slightly different and she will have trouble with her knee for the rest of her life, yet that seems a small price to pay. Lauren grows up, goes to university in London, meets the man she will marry, moves in with him and finds out they are going to have a baby. All very normal. Except that this is just one of Lauren Pailing's lives. Somewhere out there in the universe is a world where Lauren did die and her mother was destroyed by grief; where she died but a second baby for her parents saved their lives; where her father's boss either goes missing or is a good friend of the family. And then Lauren wakes up in another life, with another family - only this time she has memories of the first, and second, time she died.

Apart from the cracking plot, which kept me reading until midnight, I loved the characters too. Lauren, all three of them, her father Bob, mother Vera, are beautifully drawn, in every universe. I found Bob's 'new' life hardest to read about, especially against the other 'what could have been' versions, but the slight changes in character were fascinating to follow. I have to admit, I had to mentally 'catch up' at the beginning of each chapter, however!

My only gripe - here she goes - are the throwaway references to worlds where home pregnancy test kits don't exist - or nobody knows what a cat is! Sure, maybe Lauren's childhood home might not have been built in a different version of her life, but come on, why these random exceptions? And I thought the attempt to explain what was going on via the physicist unnecessary too. I was perfectly content using my imagination to explain the wonderful imagery of the rips in time, or the 'sunbeams' that appear to Lauren.

Overall, though, a thrilling concept - a sort of positive version of The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle - cleverly told by Alyson Rudd.

Show Less

3 more

LibraryThing member PhilipJHunt

Seriously talented writer alert! First published novel and what a super read. Deeply moving, occasionally hilarious—there’s a funeral around page 300 that is both. Rudd handles the complex of characters with such steadiness that the reader quickly picks up the thread. And so many threads! Not

content with writing a story of one life, she writes the stories of the multiple lives of the same characters. And she makes a coherent novel out of this unlikely material. A brilliant achievement. A truly enjoyable read.

Show Less

LibraryThing member iansales

Every now and again, I check the kindle deals page on the Amazon website. If I see a book going for 99p I have in storage but have not read, or fancy reading again (since it was likely many years since I last read it), I generally buy it. Same too for books that look like they might be interesting,

even if I know nothing about the book or author – although I do read the excerpt, just to give me an idea. The First Time Lauren Pailing Died was explicitly likened to Kate Atkinson’s Life After Life, a book I’d enjoyed. And appeared to tell a similar story to Jenny Erpenbeck’s The End of Days, a novel which had turned me into a fan of Erpenbeck’s writing. So The First Time Lauren Pailing Died had much to live up to. The fact it fails to do so doesn’t make it a bad book, just not as good as the Atkinson or the Erpenbeck – although, to be fair, those are high bars to clear. As Lauren grows up she often sees silver beams of light, like beams of sunlight, through which she can see alternate versions of her own life. But then she dies in an accident at the age of thirteen. And then the novel follows her family as they deal with their grief and lead their lives. It also follows a Lauren who survived the accident, moved to London, joined an ad agency, married one of its founders… And a Lauren who married a childhood sweetheart, but then wakes up one day after a nap and can remember events from her other lives… The one constant in all three lives is the mysterious disappearance of her father’s boss when Lauren was young. And it’s that which drives the plot. Unfortunately, it’s a weak engine for what is a nice piece of speculation of lives lived in alternate realities and the Many Worlds Hypothesis. Lauren’s narrative is a good read, but making it all about the disappeared man leads to a weak ending.

Show Less

LibraryThing member Islandmum84

A book that makes you think especially on deja vu you are so convinced had already happened. An interesting concept painful to think about but makes you ponders on life and reality.

Fewer