Life After Life: Like a Fox in a Hole, Sep 1923 Summary & Analysis

Thirteen-year-old Ursula has lunch with Izzie and catches her up on her life. Ursula tells her that she is no longer seeing Dr. Kellet, her therapist, as she is considered “cured.” Izzie, for her own part, has just begun writing a weekly column for a newspaper called Adventures of a Modern Spinster, in which she writes (under the name Delphie Fox) about how to be a modern, single woman, because there aren’t enough men left to marry.

When Izzie had told Hugh and Sylvie of her new job, Sylvie had called her a fool and critiqued her makeup. Hugh was more concerned about her bobbed hair, as he had forbidden the women in his family to cut their hair, and in response Pamela had gone immediately to shear it off. To Ursula, Izzie’s column seems to be nothing more than a diary of Izzie’s personal life with a little social commentary thrown in.

Meanwhile, the family has a new addition: Jimmy. His arrival had made Ursula feel as though she was being pushed further and further away from the heart of the family—she had even heard Sylvie call her an “awkward cuckoo.” Ursula had told Dr. Kellet that she felt like the odd one out of the family.

The novel flashes backward three years. Ten-year-old Ursula had been introduced to Dr. Kellet after she pushed Bridget down the stairs. At their first meeting, Dr. Kellet asks Ursula if she’s heard about reincarnation; she has not, but she explains that certain events often feel like they happen in a world that feels simultaneously like this world, and like another world.

The novel briefly returns to when Ursula is thirteen: at the restaurant, Izzie pays for lunch and takes Ursula on a tour of London in her new car, chatting somewhat thoughtlessly about Marie Antoinette as a maligned figure, reading Dante, and how she had taken a lover in Italy after the war.

Dr. Kellet explains to ten-year-old Ursula that reincarnation means beginning a new life—though he points out that Buddhists don’t believe that people come back as the same person in the same circumstance, like Ursula does. He explains that most religions have an idea of life being cyclical—a snake with its tail in its mouth, for example.

Dr. Kellet specializes in helping men when they have returned from the war. Dr. Kellet himself had had a son, Guy, who died in the war. One day Ursula saw a man in the waiting room sob on the shoulder of the receptionist. Ursula thought then that when Teddy cried when he was younger, she couldn’t bear it. All she wanted to do was make sure he never felt like crying again.

Dr. Kellet theorizes that Ursula’s brain is perhaps a little stuck, leading her to think that she is repeating experiences. He tells her that he doesn’t want this problem to result in her killing servants, however. Ursula tells him she was saving Bridget—or at least sacrificing her. Dr. Kellet responds that fate isn’t in her hands; that that would be a heavy burden for a young girl. He acknowledges that “sometimes a bad thing happens to prevent a worse thing happening,” but sometimes “there are situations where it’s impossible to imagine anything worse.”

Ursula is thirteen again: in London, Izzie and Ursula arrive in Izzie’s apartment, where everything is new and shiny. Izzie puts on a jazz record of Ida Cox. Ursula thinks that her voice is extraordinary. Izzie gets a call, after which she tells Ursula that she has to leave. Ursula takes the Tube to the train.

Dr. Kellet asks ten-year-old Ursula if she has heard of “amor fati,” which means acceptance of fate, not thinking of things as either bad or good. He goes on to ask her if she knows what “Werde, der du bist” means. Ursula has not (and wonders if Dr. Kellet knows many ten-year-old girls). Dr. Kellet explains that it means “become such as you are, having learned what that is.”

In bed that night, Pamela and Ursula discuss Ursula’s trip to London. Ursula does not mention, however, that she had witnessed a peculiar scene (unseen by Izzie) while she was there). She had seen Sylvie arm in arm with an elegantly dressed man, who guided her way up the Strand.

The novel flashes forward again. Izzie’s next column explains the freedom that a single woman could obtain from a car—particularly that she can avoid being followed down a dark street by a stranger. Ursula does not see Izzie again until Christmas, when she comes to the house “in a bit of a jam” having overspent her income. Hugh lends her money, but she is forced to sell her car and move to a less extravagant apartment.