Ursula is born with the umbilical cord wrapped around her neck and dies before taking a breath.

Dr. Fellowes arrives through the snow in time to cut the cord and save Ursula's life.

Ursula drowns while playing in the sea on a family holiday in Cornwall at age five.

Bridget returns from the armistice celebrations carrying influenza, infecting Ursula, who dies from the illness.

Driven by dread, Ursula pushes Bridget down the stairs to stop her attending the armistice celebrations.

Howard, a friend of Maurice's, rapes Ursula at her sixteenth birthday party.

Ursula nearly dies from infection following an abortion arranged by her aunt Izzy.

Ursula marries Derek Oliphant, a schoolteacher she meets by chance on a London street.

Derek attacks and kills Ursula after she attempts to leave him.

A German bomb destroys Ursula's apartment building on Argyll Road during the London Blitz.

Ursula travels to Germany, meets a man named Jürgen at a village fair, and eventually marries him.

Facing the advancing Soviet army, Ursula gives poison to her daughter Frieda and then to herself.

Maurice delivers the news to Ursula that Teddy's plane has been shot down.

Overwhelmed by premonitions of disaster, Ursula resolves to train as an assassin and kill Hitler.

Teddy survives the war and reunites joyfully with Nancy at a pub, mouthing 'thank you' to Ursula.

Life After Life follows Ursula Todd, an Englishwoman who is reborn each time she dies, and the main plot traces the most consequential of her many lives. Her early deaths — drowning as a child, dying of influenza, surviving an abusive marriage only to be killed — map the brutal power that chance and other people hold over her fate. As Ursula matures, she lives through the London Blitz and endures the loss of her beloved brother Teddy, experiencing the devastation of World War II firsthand. In one life she escapes to Germany, marries, and chooses death for herself and her daughter rather than face the advancing Soviet army. With her unique gift fully understood, Ursula determines to use her successive lives to change history by assassinating Adolf Hitler. The novel's emotional climax arrives when Teddy, having survived the war in another timeline, reunites with his beloved Nancy and silently mouths his thanks to Ursula.

Hugh retrieves his sister Izzy from Europe after she gives birth, and the baby boy is adopted abroad.

Maurice throws Ursula's knitting doll from the attic window, causing a dangerous incident on the roof.

An artist named Mr. Winton notices the girls in distress and rescues Ursula and Pamela from the sea.

Hugh returns home safely from the Great War.

Psychiatrist Dr. Kellet introduces Ursula to reincarnation and the philosophy of amor fati during their sessions.

Ursula abandons her plan to study classics at university and attends secretarial school instead.

Ursula begins a long-running affair with Crighton, a married official from the Admiralty.

Ursula shares a flat with Millie and spends her working days organizing casualty reports at the Home Office.

Ursula's rescue team pulls a barely-alive woman from the rubble of the bombed Argyll Road building.

Ursula and her brother Jimmy spot Renee Miller drinking at a hotel with a man Jimmy mistrusts.

Fireman Fred Smith attends a Blitz incident scene, and Ursula later sleeps with him hoping for transcendence.

Ursula attends Hugh's funeral, and Izzy reveals for the first time that she had a baby at sixteen.

Sylvie swallows sleeping pills on VE Day and is found lying on Teddy's bed, dead.

Ursula retires from the Home Office and feels a sudden sharp pain in her head.

The midwife, stranded at a snow-bound inn, sips rum, hinting that Ursula's lives may continue cycling.

While Ursula's deaths and rebirths drive the main narrative, a rich supporting world of family, friendship, and wartime society shapes every life she lives. Family dynamics — including Izzy's scandalous past, Hugh's gentle steadiness, and Sylvie's bitter decline — form the emotional backdrop against which Ursula grows up. Wartime relationships, including Ursula's affair with the married Crighton and her practical camaraderie with flatmate Millie, show her navigating adulthood amid enormous historical upheaval. Secondary figures like the fireman Fred Smith and the quietly mistrusted Renee Miller connect Ursula to the wider community of people caught up in the Blitz. The later chapters trace the long aftermath of war, with Sylvie dying on VE Day and Ursula carrying her grief into a solitary retirement. The novel's final image — the midwife stranded by snow at an inn — suggests Ursula's cycle of lives may never truly end.

The supporting world and lives surrounding Ursula.

Ursula falls from the attic roof while reaching for her doll thrown by Maurice and dies.

Ursula senses danger and hesitates before following Pamela into the sea, surviving the Cornwall holiday.

Ursula feels a wave of overwhelming dread as she hears Bridget returning from the armistice celebrations.

Ursula posts a note on the door warning Bridget not to come inside after the armistice.

Ursula punches Howard and kicks his shin when he tries to kiss her at her birthday party.

Ursula walks Nancy Shawcross home, steering her away from a dangerous stranger lurking near the train station.

Nancy Shawcross is found raped and strangled in a cattle trough in a life where Ursula did not intervene.

Maurice teaches Ursula how to shoot a gun.

Ursula meets Eva at a photographer's studio in Germany and begins a close friendship with her.

Ursula stays at Hitler's mountain retreat as Eva's guest and observes the Führer's charisma and pretension up close.

Miss Woolf cries in front of the rescue team for the first time as their messenger boy Tony dies.

Ursula takes Crighton's gold cigarette case from the dying Renee Miller at the Argyll Road bombing scene.

Ursula is sent to a private clinic for psychiatric care after her premonitions become unbearable.

Ursula pulls the trigger in a Munich café and kills Hitler, then is shot dead herself.

Sylvie cuts the cord from around the newborn Ursula's neck herself, as if she has done this before.

The turning points of Life After Life reveal how Ursula's growing awareness transforms her from a passive victim of fate into an agent of change. Early premonitions — hesitating at the sea in Cornwall, feeling dread as Bridget returns — are the first signs that something in Ursula remembers her past deaths. As she grows bolder, she intervenes directly: posting warnings, fighting off Howard, and steering Nancy Shawcross away from a dangerous stranger. Critical revelations, such as Nancy's death in lives where Ursula fails to act, deepen her understanding of cause and consequence. Her time in Germany — meeting Eva Braun and observing Hitler at close range — leads her toward her most consequential decision. The pool ends with twin images of Ursula at her most purposeful and her most mysterious: pulling the trigger on Hitler in Munich, and Sylvie cutting the birth cord herself as if she too has learned from practice.