Ursula Todd is born in 1910, dies, and is born again. And again. Each life plays out differently; some end in childhood, one reaches Hitler's bunker. Atkinson uses the conceit not as sci-fi but as a way to write about fate, chance, and the weight of the twentieth century. The novel is compulsively readable in a way that serious fiction rarely bothers to be.

The case for it, the case against, and the rest of the canon open with Pro.