Since early childhood Lauren Pailing has experienced glimpses of other lives she might have lived - homes and mothers recognisably her own yet slightly different. When Lauren dies for the first time, in an accident aged thirteen, she is able to somehow slip sideways into one of those other lives, into a world where Lauren Pailing is still alive. But that’s not the only time Lauren Pailing dies.

This book was so far up my street it might have been written just for me. The “other worlds” concept is endlessly fascinating and while there is an element of speculative fiction here, the main focus is on the people - on Lauren herself (themselves?) and the effects of her death(s) on those around her, branching off into further possible worlds. Despite the narrative slipping in and out of different worlds, it somehow manages never to be confusing.

The other worlds differ in subtle or not so subtle ways. In one, Britain has never had a woman prime minister (though the USA does have a ferocious female president). Another, intriguingly, has no cats. Other differences are smaller, sometimes mere blink-and-you’ll-miss-it references - names differ slightly, kettles take longer to boil.

The First Time Lauren Pailing Died is thought-provoking and beautifully written. I loved it.

Alyson Rudd’s first novel is an interesting attempt at taking the idea of the many worlds interpretation of quantum physics and looking at how that might appear though the eponymous heroine, her parents, husbands and various friends from the 1960s to the present day. Put simply, from a young age Lauren has moments of troubling clarity when, glimpsing into glass-like beams that no one else can see, she confronts another life, a little different from the one she is currently living and senses an otherness that she cannot control.
We follow Lauren through several lives in which she dies. Each time those close to her – same names but slightly different circumstances and personalities – grieve their daughter, wife and friend. For the most part, Rudd writes of the societal changes over the decades convincingly without overdoing the ‘authentic details.’ However, in Lauren’s last life, we learn that kettles take a long time to boil and that cats don’t exist. These random differences didn’t work for me; they seemed too arbitrary to contribute much to the novel. If you haven’t accepted the different worlds concept by this stage, you’re not going to!
Where the novel really succeeds is not through the science fiction element but in the delineation of love and loss, of growing and diminishing, of grief and mourning. Alyson Rudd writes very movingly about parental reactions to the death of a child and also conjures up the muted tones of a life half-lived in the dialogue between Lauren and Simon, her ‘final’ husband in the last pages of the novel. The way in which she conveys difficult emotions through dialogue is the real highlight of this story.
My thanks to NetGalley and HarperCollins Publishers for a copy of this novel in exchange for a fair review.

If you like this type of genre, then it's definitely for you. It's a little similar in someways to other novels of it's ilk - but then again, if you're talking about time travelling, then there's bound to be some similarity. Nevertheless, it was well written and enjoyable.

Life After Life is one of my favourite contemporary fiction books and when I saw the comparison, I was intrigued but wary...would it live up to it?
It seems I had nothing to worry about, Lauren Pailing is a wonderful novel. It's definitely got similarities to the Kate Atkinson book, but it's also very different and tells a story (or several!) in its own way.
We start with a linear narrative of Lauren's early life and we are presented with alternate timelines that branch off that original one. Each time Lauren dies, she wakes up in another life and something is slightly different, and each time, Lauren feels unsettled by the things she thinks she remembers. I enjoyed the little things that changed for her but also the big things that changed in the world- like the world with no cats, or where kettles boil really slowly.
The story weaves in and out of the timelines effortlessly and I never found my self confused or over-whelmed, just fascinated about what would happen next. The book is brilliantly paced, with enough details so we're invested in the characters, but sometimes years go by in the space of a sentence.
I liked the sub plot of Peter Stanning and his disappearance and I thought the wrap up of the storyline was really well done. It gave a nice consistency to the background and I liked the way it reminded us of the importance of seemingly background people in our lives, and in stories.
Overall, an excellent contemporary fiction novel with a dash of science fiction.