Another good idea which doesn't evolve in the direction it deserves. 
 Ursula Todd is born on a snowy night of January 1910 and dies several times at different ages along the century, only to come back at that fateful night to relive her life again and again with different outcomes. 
 The girl doesn't remember her previous attempts at living, with the exception of some random foreboding feelings, a trait of the plot that has disappointed many readers but that I found very good for her since she doesn't end up being so exasperated as Bill Murray in Groundhog Day and also very good for the reader who gets something less predicable than expected. 
 The point Atkinson is trying to make is that, unlike Bill Murray, Ursula doesn't have a lesson to learn, the author is not trying to make her a better person and as the story continues (or goes back to the beginning) we understand that there is not a "right way" to live he (our?)life; on the contrary sometimes we get the impression that every path chosen by Ursula is the "wrong" one. And this is exactly the point, in my opinion: we will always make mistakes in our life, we can't always save ourselves and other people from suffering and happiness doesn't necessarily lead to other happiness or vice versa. 
 On the other hand, the book is admittedly disappointing in that it deliberately leads us to believe that the protagonist will make something special with her "gift", something that will alter world history while the development of the novel will show us a quite ordinary life and a quite ordinary heroine. To tell the truth, Atkison doesn't even seem particularly interested in her Ursula, using her as a mean to explore other characters, so much that the story assumes dickensian traits (thanks also to the irony displayed by the author) or more important events (Atkinson is quite smitten with life conditions in London during WW2 bombings and I have to say she make a beautiful rendition of it, original and intimate). 
 In the end this is the weakest point of the book: the lack of a heroine that we can care about. 
 Ursula passes her childhood like a ghost, and yet this is perhaps the most interesting stage of her life as she distinguish herself has a peculiar kid, full of unanswerable questions; we don't know almost anything about her twenties and we find her again as a young woman whose personality we never understand since it radically changes from one life to another, with the notable constant that whenever Ursula chooses the more traditional path of marriage she's invariably doomed to unhappiness. Are men so bad or is it just she who has a peculiar ability to choose the wrong ones? 
 Another common trait seems to be her nonchalant attitude toward life, her tendency to be swept away by the events even when she tries to directs them. Maybe it is a consequence of the reiteration of her life but we almost never see Ursula's heart: we know she has one, especially in the tenderness toward her siblings but we perceive it with difficulty since she seems the kind of woman who is rarely touched by other people. 
 Arkinson's beautiful writing stile, simultaneously poignant yet unassuming, and capable of delicate metaphors doesn't really make up for the flatness of many plot twists and the general bleakness 
 of Ursula's existence, one that sometimes make the reader wonder why we are talking about her at all.