Lauren Pailing lives her life intrigued by metallic slices like sunbeams. Through these she catches glimpses of other worlds, some familiar, some not. For example, she sees varying versions of her mother, her house and her family.

This is how Alyson Rudd takes on the challenge of an ‘other worlds’ narrative. Lauren herself is a likeable character who is easy for the reader to bond with, and this type of story is irresistible to us all. After all, if we were brave enough to ask that person on a date, if we’d got pregnant at a young age, if we’d indulged ourselves in risky behaviour... we all wonder how our lives would be different.

Lauren dies tragically aged 13, and Rudd weaves an increasingly complex web detailing the subsequent life she falls into and the lives of her parents and family.

Although confusing sometimes - naturally the timescales and narrative perspectives jump rather frequently - Rudd pulls together the various strands of the novel skilfully. Lauren’s own story is weaved around that of her father’s boss, Peter, who is missing in all three of her lives.

I’d definitely recommend this novel as an engaging and thought provoking read.

There have been quite a few books recently about either reliving your life or about parallel lives and universes. For me, the modern classic of this sub-genre is Kate Atkinson’s Life After Life, but The Version of Us, The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle, and The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August all also jump to mind. To a greater or lesser degree, I’ve enjoyed all those books, so even if the premise of The First Time Lauren Pailing Died didn’t seem all that original, I was still excited to read it.

I think that stories of this kind can succeed in several different ways: through a thought-provoking scientific/philosophical exploration of the topic, through mind-binding twistiness, or simply as a way of telling several interesting and emotional personal stories in one. There were moments in this book where it seemed on the verge of doing all three, but ultimately, while it was a vaguely diverting family saga with some intriguing moments and some emotional ones, it never really did any one of these things well enough to capture my imagination.

The basic premise here is firstly, that the main character, Lauren (born in the 1970s in Cheshire), can see other versions of the world and the lives of herself and her loved ones through otherwise invisible sunbeams. And secondly, that whenever she dies, instead of disappearing entirely, she shifts into one of these parallel lives. For some reason, the sunbeam thing seemed to only happen to Lauren, while the shifting instead of dying thing also happened to some other characters on-page and was heavily implied to happen to pretty much everyone who died before their time. This slight disconnect between Lauren as unique versus Lauren as normal but more perceptive than average was a bit jarring and felt representative of the book not going deep enough for my tastes into the mysteries of its central scenario.

I don’t want to get into spoilers, but given the title and the way the book is presented, I was surprised by how few times the main character actually died. And, at least until the end, how little time she spends reflecting on previous lives or sneaking a peak into other worlds. As a result, most of the book isn’t very metaphysical at all and is essentially just normal people going about their business in a normal way. Which isn’t necessarily a terrible thing, but without mysterious distractions, the plot rather stands or falls on the strength of its characters and their lives. I liked Lauren herself, but few of the other characters made an impression and in none of the various lives did anyone do anything particularly noteworthy or exciting. It was 90% run of the mill middle class life, with 10% soap opera-style dramatic suicides and affairs with unlikely resolutions. And either way, a few scattered bright spots aside, it was mostly pretty unremittingly depressing, even allowing for the fact that a certain number of deaths were required to make the USP work.

In the final third, there is both some attempt to investigate a domestic mystery that’s been bubbling under the surface throughout and some attempt to engage with the bigger mystery of just what’s going on with Lauren on the level of both psychology and physics and as a result, I started to get more excited. But the resolution of the first mystery is somewhat underwhelming and the resolution of the second pretty inconclusive. I didn’t feel like I had any real closure – just more of the same sadness and a certain degree of wondering what the point of it all had been.

Ultimately, this was an okay book. There was just enough of both the interpersonal drama and the metaphysical intrigue to keep me reading. But it didn’t really bring anything new to the mix compared to any of the books it could be compared to and overall I was left feeling pretty underwhelmed and as though an intriguing premise had failed to burst into life.

Lauren Pailing was a fairly ordinary young girl when she died aged 13. However when she wakes up life is as it was….well nearly but with a few very small changes. Each time Lauren dies and wakes up in a very similar life there is one constant. Peter Stanning has disappeared.

This is a very clever book and one which I enjoyed very much. One review I read described this as time travelling. I personally saw it more as parallel universes. In reality it is up to the reader to decide what is really happening.

The author has written this story from the point of view of various characters. This enables the reader to keep a track on which of Lauren’s lives we are following. Consequently what could have been a hugely complex and confusing book was actually quite easy to follow and keep track of.

I don’t want to say too much more as it really would spoil the book. Do you like quirky & clever books? Are you interested in a slight science fiction edge to the ordinary world? Perhaps you are a fan of Claire North’s “The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August”? If so, then then is definitely the book for you.

I received a copy of this book via Netgalley.

This is a book that as you read it just keeps on giving .
Laur. Is almost like a cat with 9 lives- we follow her journey as she goes through several lives as she dies in each.
Great writing
Thank you to both NetGalley and HQ for my eARC in exchange for my honest unbiased review

The First Time Lauren Pailing Died is an accomplished and moving debut novel. Every time Lauren dies, a certain amount of trauma follows in its’ wake, and this is well explored. It is a profound exploration of loss, with a nod to Kate Atkinson’s Life After Life.

The First Time Lauren Pailing Died is an accomplished debut novel that stretches far beyond the conventional sliding doors set up it begins with. This novel packs an emotional punch that is constantly ascending. It asks more than “what if or will they wont they? The first time Lauren Pailing dies she is thirteen and on holiday with her neighbor, this is not the end though, we follow the lives of those who loved her, whilst also following the other life of Lauren, we go beyond. The one thing that ties things together is in each of the lives, a man named Peter Stanning goes missing and Lauren needs to find him.

This novel thrives on being in the moment. It swings between characters, but in each character, thrives on the company they are in and seeking the best out of each other. Each character has their moment, its not just about Lauren. It’s a story about identity, and finding a place in this world, a version of ones self, and asking the question is that the life we are supposed to lead?

I particularly enjoyed the characters living a life without Lauren. The moral dilemmas poised to her grieving father, create some of the books most heartbreaking moments, however these can be found constantly throughout the book. I believe Alyson Rudd has reawaken this type of story, no longer have the tube doors shut and we see alternate lives, she has flipped the roles completely and asked bigger questions, ultimately coming up with a superb answer and a unforgettable novel.

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.