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Todd Family #2
A God in Ruins
Goodreads Choice Award
Nominee for Readers' Favorite Historical Fiction (2015)In Life After Life Ursula Todd lived through the turbulent events of the last century again and again. In A God in Ruins, Atkinson turns her focus on Ursula’s beloved younger brother Teddy – would-be poet, RAF bomber pilot, husband and father – as he navigates the perils and progress of the 20th century. For all Teddy endures in battle, his greatest challenge will be to face living in a future he never expected to have.
480 pages, Hardcover
First published May 1, 2015
About the author
Kate Atkinson
67 books11.6k followersKate Atkinson was born in York and now lives in Edinburgh. Her first novel, Behind the Scenes at the Museum, won the Whitbread Book of the Year Award and she has been a critically acclaimed international bestselling author ever since.
She is the author of a collection of short stories, Not the End of the World, and of the critically acclaimed novels Human Croquet, Emotionally Weird, Case Histories, and One Good Turn.
Case Histories introduced her readers to Jackson Brodie, former police inspector turned private investigator, and won the Saltire Book of the Year Award and the Prix Westminster.
When Will There Be Good News? was voted Richard & Judy Book Best Read of the Year. After Case Histories and One Good Turn, it was her third novel to feature the former private detective Jackson Brodie, who makes a welcome return in Started Early, Took My Dog.
She is the author of a collection of short stories, Not the End of the World, and of the critically acclaimed novels Human Croquet, Emotionally Weird, Case Histories, and One Good Turn.
Case Histories introduced her readers to Jackson Brodie, former police inspector turned private investigator, and won the Saltire Book of the Year Award and the Prix Westminster.
When Will There Be Good News? was voted Richard & Judy Book Best Read of the Year. After Case Histories and One Good Turn, it was her third novel to feature the former private detective Jackson Brodie, who makes a welcome return in Started Early, Took My Dog.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 7,042 reviews
June 19, 2018
man, this book. chills, i tell you, everywhere chills. this is a companion book to Life After Life, and technically, it is "teddy's story." teddy, you will recall from life, is ursula's little brother. if you have not read Life After Life - what the crap is wrong with you?? go!! read!! meet us back here when you're done!
i say "technically," because although teddy is definitely the center of this book, we are still treated to the stories and perspectives of some of our other friends from life, as well as some new additions: sylvie, izzie, nancy, hugh, sunny, viola, bertie. and just a dash of ursula. who does not spend this book dying on every other page, lucky girl.
the two things about life that resonated with me long after i closed the book had nothing to do with its structural playfulness, which seems to be "the thing" about the book that most people wanna talk about. and it should be talked about because it was risky and well-handled. but for me, that was more or less cosmetic. the things that shattered me were her writing about war and her glorification of english stoicism. and while this book doesn't have the same structure as life, it most definitely has these two focal points.
and they are just as good here as they were in life. i'm not big into wartime narratives, but atkinson has a gift. she takes the english experience during world war two and just dissects the crap out of it. whether it be in long chapters about teddy's experiences as a fighter pilot (sometimes TOO long, which is my sole complaint about this book, but that complaint is tied to my own tastes which balked at the very detailed descriptions of planes which are no doubt fascinating to people with an interest in military history), or in smaller stories about the way the war changed people - their sexual permissiveness, social restructuring, and - my second ♥ - that stiff upper lip.
if you're reading this review, you probably know me, and know my tastes. and a lot of what i enjoy, from steinbeck to hardy to grit lit are stories of endurance and adaptability in unforgiving circumstances. the triumph of the human spirit and man's struggle against forces of nature and hardship &yada. and this entire book is resting on the sturdy foundation of stoic forbearance. on doing what needs to be done. on making do and not making a fuss.
a perfect example of this:
It was when she had come down from the walls at Monkgate Bar and was waiting to cross the road at the traffic lights that a black curtain suddenly descended and covered her left eye…If she had gone completely blind she would have called for help, but the loss of only one eye didn't seem cause enough to involve complete strangers.
i mean, COME ON! that is stellar.
and also:
… instead he had stayed and plodded on, because something told him that this was the life that had to be lived out��He preferred solitary pursuits, and being a member of a group seemed rather dutiful, but he could do dutiful and somebody had to or the world would fall apart.
and the book is just FILLED with that, same as in life. and it is also filled with stories, stories, stories, each one a soulhurting gem. three words: do.mi.nic.
i said that the book wasn't as structurally playful as life, but it does do a couple of things. we bounce around back and forth in time and voice: prewar, wartime, postwar, post-post war, with an overarching omniscient narrator casually inserting facts and fates that will happen in the future, which may or may not be fleshed out in later chapters. details will occur, and then recur in a different context, with different import. we will revisit meaningful objects through the eyes of several characters, who may not know what they are looking at. oh, and there's this one other thing. about which you will hear nothing from me. except that it's more reader-jarring than anything that happens in life.
don't read too many reviews of this book. i have been careful, but others may not be. go in cold and prepare to be blown away again by this woman's phenomenal storytelling abilities and her ability to write characters for whom you will care very deeply. and fear for, because we are at war, and you can be killed while sunbathing on a roof.
please, more, ms. atkinson!! jimmy!! izzie! maurice!! anyone!
..........................................................................................................
this is only a four-star from me because it is not quite as good as Life After Life, which is like saying camembert is not quite as good as brie. it's practically a meaningless distinction, as i would eat either of those anytime, anywhere. for all intents and purposes, this is a five-star book.
come to my blog!
i say "technically," because although teddy is definitely the center of this book, we are still treated to the stories and perspectives of some of our other friends from life, as well as some new additions: sylvie, izzie, nancy, hugh, sunny, viola, bertie. and just a dash of ursula. who does not spend this book dying on every other page, lucky girl.
the two things about life that resonated with me long after i closed the book had nothing to do with its structural playfulness, which seems to be "the thing" about the book that most people wanna talk about. and it should be talked about because it was risky and well-handled. but for me, that was more or less cosmetic. the things that shattered me were her writing about war and her glorification of english stoicism. and while this book doesn't have the same structure as life, it most definitely has these two focal points.
and they are just as good here as they were in life. i'm not big into wartime narratives, but atkinson has a gift. she takes the english experience during world war two and just dissects the crap out of it. whether it be in long chapters about teddy's experiences as a fighter pilot (sometimes TOO long, which is my sole complaint about this book, but that complaint is tied to my own tastes which balked at the very detailed descriptions of planes which are no doubt fascinating to people with an interest in military history), or in smaller stories about the way the war changed people - their sexual permissiveness, social restructuring, and - my second ♥ - that stiff upper lip.
if you're reading this review, you probably know me, and know my tastes. and a lot of what i enjoy, from steinbeck to hardy to grit lit are stories of endurance and adaptability in unforgiving circumstances. the triumph of the human spirit and man's struggle against forces of nature and hardship &yada. and this entire book is resting on the sturdy foundation of stoic forbearance. on doing what needs to be done. on making do and not making a fuss.
a perfect example of this:
It was when she had come down from the walls at Monkgate Bar and was waiting to cross the road at the traffic lights that a black curtain suddenly descended and covered her left eye…If she had gone completely blind she would have called for help, but the loss of only one eye didn't seem cause enough to involve complete strangers.
i mean, COME ON! that is stellar.
and also:
… instead he had stayed and plodded on, because something told him that this was the life that had to be lived out��He preferred solitary pursuits, and being a member of a group seemed rather dutiful, but he could do dutiful and somebody had to or the world would fall apart.
and the book is just FILLED with that, same as in life. and it is also filled with stories, stories, stories, each one a soulhurting gem. three words: do.mi.nic.
i said that the book wasn't as structurally playful as life, but it does do a couple of things. we bounce around back and forth in time and voice: prewar, wartime, postwar, post-post war, with an overarching omniscient narrator casually inserting facts and fates that will happen in the future, which may or may not be fleshed out in later chapters. details will occur, and then recur in a different context, with different import. we will revisit meaningful objects through the eyes of several characters, who may not know what they are looking at. oh, and there's this one other thing. about which you will hear nothing from me. except that it's more reader-jarring than anything that happens in life.
don't read too many reviews of this book. i have been careful, but others may not be. go in cold and prepare to be blown away again by this woman's phenomenal storytelling abilities and her ability to write characters for whom you will care very deeply. and fear for, because we are at war, and you can be killed while sunbathing on a roof.
please, more, ms. atkinson!! jimmy!! izzie! maurice!! anyone!
..........................................................................................................
this is only a four-star from me because it is not quite as good as Life After Life, which is like saying camembert is not quite as good as brie. it's practically a meaningless distinction, as i would eat either of those anytime, anywhere. for all intents and purposes, this is a five-star book.
come to my blog!
January 18, 2024
“A man is a god in ruins. When men are innocent, life shall be longer, and shall pass into the immortal, as gently as we wake from dreams.“ – Ralph Waldo Emerson – NatureThus opens Kate Atkinson’s companion work to her much acclaimed Life After Life. While the earlier work focused on The Blitz, Germany’s prolonged bombing of London and other English cities during World War II, this one looks at the Allied bombing campaign against Germany, first against strategic resources and later targeting civilians. As the Todd family was employed as our eyes on the earlier stages of the war, so, again, it is the Todds through whose eyes we experience war and its effects, just not the same Todds. Ursula, the star of Life After Life, is a bit player here. The focus this time is Ursula’s beloved younger brother Ted. Not merely the good-hearted, kind-natured boy of the prior book, Ted is all grown up and a pilot, flying many bombing missions over the continent.
Life After Life was an adventure of imagining alternate possible outcomes from specific acts and trying each of them out, playing the same hand different ways. There is no fantasy element in this book, or at least not nearly to the same degree. But that does not mean that Atkinson has settled into a sequential narrative form. There are very non-sequential stops up and down the 20th century and even into the 21st. From 1925 when Teddy is still a kid, enduring the third degree from his writer aunt, to 1944 when he takes off on his last mission. From the immediate post war era to 1993 when he is packed off to a senior residence. From his early married life in 1951 to events in 2012.
The Halifax - from the Daily Mail
And, as with Life After Life, Atkinson offers us multiple viewpoints. While we primarily see events through Ted, we also see the world from the perspective of his daughter and grandchildren, from his aunt Izzie. Mysteries in one view are sometimes clarified in another. The time tracks, heard together, make a symphony. This event, in this time, impacts that result in another, which generates a further outcome in a third. Solo instruments joined to make a glorious sound.
It is not just the military struggle, and its collateral affect that Atkinson examines. She has a keen eye for change. The sexual revolution in permissiveness and acceptance that accompanies war, the development of sylvan fields into cookie cutter housing tracts, the counter-culture, or at least one manifestation of it, holding up images of diverse eras side by side.
Avian imagery permeates. The most poignant, for me, is when young Ted rues the loss to generations to come from his aunt having consumed a single skylark, a potent symbol for the lives extinguished in war, the lost possibilities, reminding us of Spring and Fall by GM Hopkins.
It wasn’t just the one lark that had been silenced by Izzie…It was the generations of birds that would have come after it and now would never be born. All those beautiful songs that would never be sung. Later in life he learned the word ‘exponential’, and later still the word ‘fractal’, but for now it was a flock that grew larger and larger as it disappeared into a future that would never be.A budgy with a clipped wing stands in for one character’s feeling of imprisonment. There are plenty of ups and downs to accompany the feathered ones. As Ted is a pilot, he heads up into the air and down again as many times. At a Beethoven concert the elevation brought on by pure beauty is palpable.
Kate Atkinson - from the Telegraph
Another element that carries through is a consideration of nature, and our connection to it. Ted personifies this impulse, sensitive to beauty in the natural world since childhood. He writes a nature column for a local newspaper as an adult. Through his sad eyes we see the loss of much that was precious through the development of the post war era, and rue, with him the decline in appreciation. Ted, in his nature column, bemoans the near extinction of the water vole.
Atkinson says, in the author’s note that follows the text of the novel in the copy I read, that she is writing about the Fall of Man from Grace. There are, throughout the novel, as she notes, a lot of references to Utopia, Eden, to an Arcadian past, to Paradise Lost and Pilgrim’s Progress. Ted’s daughter lives with her kids and their father for a time, for example, at a commune called Adam’s Acre.
He felt relief when the overcrowded train finally pulled slowly away from the platform, glad to be leaving the dirty wreckage of London. There was a war on. After all and he was supposed to be fighting it. He discovered the little wrinkled apple [From Fox Corner] in his pocket and ate it in two bites. It tasted sour when he had expected it to be sweet.He returns to Fox Corner for a visit late in life, but it is now closed to him.
A lot of attention is paid to marriage and relationships, particularly to coping when the match looks perfect on the surface, pre-ordained even, but lacks the passion of great love. Wedlock that seems, whether in its inception or subsequent practice, more lock than wed. And alongside that is a look at parenting. Many of the parental sorts here are no better to their progeny than the powers that be were to their young soldiers. Parents do not come off all that well overall, as was the case in Life After Life. Ted’s daughter Viola is an extremely poor excuse for a parent, selfish from birth and traumatized by a loss in her youth, she offers Ted none of the parental rewards his years of sacrifice should have earned him.
Why did you have children? Bertie asked, later in their lives. ‘Was it just the biological imperative to breed?’Atkinson dips into poetry more than a few times, sprinkling her attention around. GM Hopkins of course, with his vision of the eternal in the natural, is an obvious choice for relating to Ted’s appreciation for and wonder at the beauty of nature. Keats, Blake, Wordsworth, Shakespeare and more. There is even a passage late in the book that joins lines from seven poems from six poets. Have your search engines warmed and ready.
‘That’s why everyone has children,’ Viola said, ‘they just dress it up as something more sentimental.’
I think that all novels are not only fiction but they are about fiction too…Every time a writer throws themselves at the first line of a novel they are embarking on an experiment. An adventure.Atkinson, having set aside the fun What if of Life After Life, contains herself until the end when she offers commentary on authorial prerogatives, imagining different outcomes for her characters, imagining lives that might have been, the god of her created domain.
So, a lot on the mechanisms, but is A God in Ruins worth reading? Absolutely. Ted is a very engaging character and, even though his stiff upper lip may get in the way from time to time, he is a decent sort, a good man, easy to care about. Atkinson lets us peek past some of the outer armor on some of the less appealing characters to see what made them the way they are, and leaves you thinking that if you had known that information earlier you might have been more sympathetic to this one or that. And offers a chance to consider how you might have acted faced with those circumstances. There is one particularly large reveal near the end that explains a lot about one character in particular. Yes, engaging, moving. You will learn a bit about the massive bombing of Germany that was going on during the war, and a bit about how the war affected life on the homefront. Atkinson shows us changes in English life from the war to now, changes in her people, and over the course of her narrative she changes how we see them.
A God in Ruins could easily be seen as An Author in Triumph. Most writers would be happy to have written one masterpiece. With A God in Ruins Kate Atkinson has written a second. If you don’t read this book you may not be cast out of Eden, but you probably should be.
Posted 1/8/16
Published date - 5/5/2015 (hc) – 1/12/16 (TP)
=============================EXTRA STUFF
Links to the author’s personal and FB pages
Video of a Halifax bomber – ignition and liftoff
Kate Atkinson Tells Book Club How She Crafts Characters At All Life Stages-from NPR
Readers’ group guide
A wiki on Kibbo Kift, a scouting alternative group noted in the book
My review of Todd Family #1, Life After Life
May 5, 2017
The second novel about a Bomber Command pilot I’ve read in the space of as many months and both A God in Ruins and The Way Back to Florence have turned out to be fabulous enthralling if very different novels. The pilot is in this novel is Teddy, brother of Ursula in Life After Life. The novel spans his long life and offsets and hones it with the lives of his daughter and his two grandchildren.
As ever with Atkinson there are layers of artifice in this novel – on one level, her novels are generally about fiction itself - but unlike Life after Life whose tricks I found gimmicky the artifice here is subtle and as such has greater artistry. Once again we have a family saga spanning four generations with a central figurehead acting as a kind of cypher through which the history is decrypted. And once again Atkinson’s brilliant command of structure is in evidence. She deftly shifts the narrative from one decade to another and back again without sacrificing the dramatic tension.
A God in Ruins exudes a similar nostalgia for the pre-war past as Brideshead Revisited. Atkinson clearly feels a great deal of affection for the old world modesty and self-effacement of Teddy – brilliantly offset by the bullying egotism and blinkered narcissism of his gloriously obnoxious daughter Viola (one of the best literary villains of past few years!). The war is depicted as a time of simple and stolen pleasures, of camaraderie and even excitement (Atkinson gives her characters very glamorous wartime occupations: Teddy’s wife Nancy is a codebreaker at Bletchley Park, a sister is an ATA pilot and a friend a female SOE agent); post-war, all the way to today, is depicted as a muddle of self-indulgence and misguided pursuits of utopia. Fox’s Wood, Teddy’s childhood home, is the utopia of the novel – everything eventually seems to lead back there as if all that followed, most obviously the war, was a fatal cosmic error in navigation. “The war had been a great chasm and there could be no going back to the other side, to the people they were before.”
Atkinson has a habit of being very hard on her female characters, especially on her mothers. Rarely do they like their children, let alone love them. Viola is her most monstrous mother to date. And as such provides most of the book’s best humour. At times we’re left asking ourselves if the sacrifice of all those young men was worth it if it spawned monsters like Viola. She also pokes fun at many contemporary pursuits (care homes, marketing jargon, courses in self-discovery, dietary fads) and includes some self-satire when Viola becomes a successful novelist.
Right, I’m on the Eurostar to Paris and we’re about to enter the tunnel so I’ve leave it at that…
As ever with Atkinson there are layers of artifice in this novel – on one level, her novels are generally about fiction itself - but unlike Life after Life whose tricks I found gimmicky the artifice here is subtle and as such has greater artistry. Once again we have a family saga spanning four generations with a central figurehead acting as a kind of cypher through which the history is decrypted. And once again Atkinson’s brilliant command of structure is in evidence. She deftly shifts the narrative from one decade to another and back again without sacrificing the dramatic tension.
A God in Ruins exudes a similar nostalgia for the pre-war past as Brideshead Revisited. Atkinson clearly feels a great deal of affection for the old world modesty and self-effacement of Teddy – brilliantly offset by the bullying egotism and blinkered narcissism of his gloriously obnoxious daughter Viola (one of the best literary villains of past few years!). The war is depicted as a time of simple and stolen pleasures, of camaraderie and even excitement (Atkinson gives her characters very glamorous wartime occupations: Teddy’s wife Nancy is a codebreaker at Bletchley Park, a sister is an ATA pilot and a friend a female SOE agent); post-war, all the way to today, is depicted as a muddle of self-indulgence and misguided pursuits of utopia. Fox’s Wood, Teddy’s childhood home, is the utopia of the novel – everything eventually seems to lead back there as if all that followed, most obviously the war, was a fatal cosmic error in navigation. “The war had been a great chasm and there could be no going back to the other side, to the people they were before.”
Atkinson has a habit of being very hard on her female characters, especially on her mothers. Rarely do they like their children, let alone love them. Viola is her most monstrous mother to date. And as such provides most of the book’s best humour. At times we’re left asking ourselves if the sacrifice of all those young men was worth it if it spawned monsters like Viola. She also pokes fun at many contemporary pursuits (care homes, marketing jargon, courses in self-discovery, dietary fads) and includes some self-satire when Viola becomes a successful novelist.
Right, I’m on the Eurostar to Paris and we’re about to enter the tunnel so I’ve leave it at that…
April 20, 2015
In Kate Atkinson’s time-bending novel, Life After Life, the author toyed with time and created several different timelines and narratives for her main character, Ursula Todd. Now, in this companion piece, the focus is on Teddy, Ursula’s brother, and his life as an RAF Halifax pilot and under-the-radar hero.
Atkinson holds the magical power to shape time to fit her story and this one moves seamlessly from Teddy’s last treacherous flights (fewer than half of RAF pilots actually survived World War II) to the 20th and 21st century, where Teddy is a husband, father, and grandfather. We get to meet his daughter Viola, who blames him for her mother’s premature departure and makes a mess out of her own life…and subsequently, the lives of her two children.
But the key to this story lies in his title, which comes from Ralph Waldo Emerson: “A man is a god in ruins. When men are innocent, life shall be longer, and shall pass into the immortal, as gently as we awake from dreams.” Wartime is, the author argues, man’s greatest fall from grace and so she walks a fine tightrope: revealing the amazing heroism and self-sacrifice of the men such as Teddy and his crew yet showcasing how (in her own words) “whether our war on savagery did not, in the end, become itself savage as we attacked the very people – the old, the young, women – that civilization is supposed to defend.” When Ursula asks Teddy, “and how do you define ‘innocence” anyway?”, attention must be paid.
The postwar scenario occupies every bit as large a part as the war narrative; Viola never does understand the forces that shaped her father or the fabric of the man he became. As a result, she cannot be called innocent and her own life is often in self-defined ruins.
Anyone who suspects that this book is less – well, inventive – than its predecessor will be suitably satisfied with Kate Atkinson’s sleight of hand. A God In Ruins is also the philosophical sibling of the earlier book; everything in life can change quickly – in a heartbeat – and life is little more than a single breath. That breath is particularly precarious during wartime (“All the birds who were never born, all the songs that were never sung and so can only exist in imagination.”)
The bottom line (again in the author’s words) is that “War is savage. For everyone. Innocent or guilty.” It dehumanizes us and in too many cases, it takes away our story. And THAT Is the brilliance that lies behind this work.
Atkinson holds the magical power to shape time to fit her story and this one moves seamlessly from Teddy’s last treacherous flights (fewer than half of RAF pilots actually survived World War II) to the 20th and 21st century, where Teddy is a husband, father, and grandfather. We get to meet his daughter Viola, who blames him for her mother’s premature departure and makes a mess out of her own life…and subsequently, the lives of her two children.
But the key to this story lies in his title, which comes from Ralph Waldo Emerson: “A man is a god in ruins. When men are innocent, life shall be longer, and shall pass into the immortal, as gently as we awake from dreams.” Wartime is, the author argues, man’s greatest fall from grace and so she walks a fine tightrope: revealing the amazing heroism and self-sacrifice of the men such as Teddy and his crew yet showcasing how (in her own words) “whether our war on savagery did not, in the end, become itself savage as we attacked the very people – the old, the young, women – that civilization is supposed to defend.” When Ursula asks Teddy, “and how do you define ‘innocence” anyway?”, attention must be paid.
The postwar scenario occupies every bit as large a part as the war narrative; Viola never does understand the forces that shaped her father or the fabric of the man he became. As a result, she cannot be called innocent and her own life is often in self-defined ruins.
Anyone who suspects that this book is less – well, inventive – than its predecessor will be suitably satisfied with Kate Atkinson’s sleight of hand. A God In Ruins is also the philosophical sibling of the earlier book; everything in life can change quickly – in a heartbeat – and life is little more than a single breath. That breath is particularly precarious during wartime (“All the birds who were never born, all the songs that were never sung and so can only exist in imagination.”)
The bottom line (again in the author’s words) is that “War is savage. For everyone. Innocent or guilty.” It dehumanizes us and in too many cases, it takes away our story. And THAT Is the brilliance that lies behind this work.
October 22, 2017
I guess I just loved everything about this book except the cover but I won't knock any stars off for that. Kate Atkinson writes like a dream. The early parts of this book are slow but the prose is so good the slowness does not matter. And it needs to be read carefully anyway because at times the story flits backwards and forwards and the reader needs to be alert in order to keep track.
I enjoyed the fact that the book is set in the same world as Life After Life but focuses on Teddy instead of Ursula. She pops in and out but this is Teddy's story and Teddy's life. There is a wealth of historical detail about World War 2 and the part played by fighter pilots which would not usually be my cup of tea. However the author tells it so well and brings it all to life in such a way that you can imagine being up there in that tiny plane or worse, crash landing in the North Sea.
Teddy is a wonderful character who grows from boyhood to old man during the story and becomes someone you really care for. And then the ending absolutely stunned me. I did not see that coming and I will be thinking about it and replaying it for days. Thank you very much Kate Atkinson and what on earth are you going to write next?
I enjoyed the fact that the book is set in the same world as Life After Life but focuses on Teddy instead of Ursula. She pops in and out but this is Teddy's story and Teddy's life. There is a wealth of historical detail about World War 2 and the part played by fighter pilots which would not usually be my cup of tea. However the author tells it so well and brings it all to life in such a way that you can imagine being up there in that tiny plane or worse, crash landing in the North Sea.
Teddy is a wonderful character who grows from boyhood to old man during the story and becomes someone you really care for. And then the ending absolutely stunned me. I did not see that coming and I will be thinking about it and replaying it for days. Thank you very much Kate Atkinson and what on earth are you going to write next?
August 31, 2016
I hope this doesn’t sound conceited, but you might crow, too, if you had just written one BILLION reviews. I have the magic of combinatorics to thank. There are nine different fill-in-the-blank sections in this review that allow ten separate candidates each which in the end will embody the text. That makes 10 to the 9th power (1,000,000,000) possible outcomes. If you want your own individualized version, take the digits of your Social Security Number or any other 9-digit sequence of your choosing, and reveal the corresponding numerical choice under the spoiler tag at each juncture.
First of all, let me apologize to my friends here who may have thought I was 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 . My inactivity was due instead to 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 .
This book is a companion to Atkinson’s celebrated Life After Life, one I liked a lot for the 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 . Ursula, the often recreated character in Life After Life had a younger brother, Teddy, who was the focus here. Teddy was an RAF pilot who was also defined by his 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 . Unlike Life After Life, Ursula and her many iterations were not a big part of this story. The lens this time focuses squarely on Teddy and those closest to him, extending from boyhood to the “Care” Home, with temporal zigzags throughout. Among the other P.O.V. characters, several were fleshed out quite fully. For instance, we saw with Teddy’s 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 .
Beyond the exceptional character development, I really liked 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 . I’ve now read enough Kate Atkinson to know she’s 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 .
I’m rating this somewhere in the vicinity of 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 stars. The only thing I’m counting off for is that it occasionally felt just a bit long. If I’m honest, though, that may reflect more on me than the book. With my old commute I’d get hour-long chunks of reading time. Until I tweak my routine to find those chunks again, my status as a Goodreader will be threatened. Despite my delay in finishing, the book truly was a pleasure. Atkinson proved her ascendance again.
Let’s see if I know what you’re thinking after a sample of one billion reviews. 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
First of all, let me apologize to my friends here who may have thought I was 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 . My inactivity was due instead to 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 .
This book is a companion to Atkinson’s celebrated Life After Life, one I liked a lot for the 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 . Ursula, the often recreated character in Life After Life had a younger brother, Teddy, who was the focus here. Teddy was an RAF pilot who was also defined by his 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 . Unlike Life After Life, Ursula and her many iterations were not a big part of this story. The lens this time focuses squarely on Teddy and those closest to him, extending from boyhood to the “Care” Home, with temporal zigzags throughout. Among the other P.O.V. characters, several were fleshed out quite fully. For instance, we saw with Teddy’s 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 .
Beyond the exceptional character development, I really liked 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 . I’ve now read enough Kate Atkinson to know she’s 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 .
I’m rating this somewhere in the vicinity of 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 stars. The only thing I’m counting off for is that it occasionally felt just a bit long. If I’m honest, though, that may reflect more on me than the book. With my old commute I’d get hour-long chunks of reading time. Until I tweak my routine to find those chunks again, my status as a Goodreader will be threatened. Despite my delay in finishing, the book truly was a pleasure. Atkinson proved her ascendance again.
Let’s see if I know what you’re thinking after a sample of one billion reviews. 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
February 9, 2016
This is another case where I took a chance to read an author's book having not been a fan of a previous book.
If you read my review of "Life After Life", you'll see, I wasn't 'ga-ga' over that book!!!
I didn't 'jump' for joy when this first book came out either. PASS were my first thoughts!
Overtime ... I heard and read a few things about this 'companion' novel to have me re-consider ...( enough to enter a Goodreads give-a-way). No, I didn't win...
but my local thrift box had a 'like new' copy for a dollar. ( the universe was speaking).
Plus...I had remembered months before, Goodreads member, Violet Wells, said a couple of things in her review that had me up to 'seriously considering' giving Kate Atkinson another try. I never said Atkinson wasn't a good writer...it was just that the story in "Life After Life" drove me bananas. Nails-on-a-chalkboard experience...
( with me still stuck with the scene about Ursula -sex- the doctors office and not knowing where babies come from) ... I never recovered from that situation!
Moving into "A God in Ruins".....
WOW...... *awesome* reading surprise!!! I'm sincerely surprised by how fantastic this was. Heartbreaking...real..
( so much to talk about).... Emotions FELT!!!
For me...it's all about TEDDY....( the cycle of a life)!
Teddy as a child
Teddy during the war
Teddy after the war.
Teddy is doing the storytelling. The best kind too. An adult man...telling us his life story.
I fell in love with him as a child. Funny dialogue conversations in the beginning with he and his aunt Izzy. ( I was laughing out loud)...
but soon things shifted and I felt sad for this growing young boy. Even before he was a full teen, it was easy to see this boy's integrity - his sense of purpose in life. His dreams were not just for his own adult life ...but his desires for 'his' children ...( he was only 11 years old).
That feeling never left me, ( his young self), as we see him as a young man who is passionate for flying bombers. WE GET IT!!! Even if you don't like the nitty-gritty details of 'war'...there was something very moving about how war was described through Teddy.
Teddy is an enduring character. At the beginning he seems a little aloof...with a dry even key personality. I soon realized while he did not express exuberant emotion, I was feeling tons 'for' him.
The YING & the YANG... It was a pretty ugly relationship between Teddy and his daughter Viola. As a parent ..there are so many ways to look at this tragedy..
Does it help to be angry at Viola for being a such a selfish self- centered creature?
Her children are beautiful... But unfortunately and fortunately...we see them through the eyes of Teddy (Viola wasn't dishing out an ounce of touchy-feely love energy).
In the end... "A God in Ruins" can make you want to crawl back into bed for a day and pull the covers over you. I ached!
The depth and richness from the storytelling has added new breath to mine.
I could cry just thinking of this story! WONDERFUL!!!!!
p.s. This makes 3 books in a row where they each Have been ****phenomenal****
Bases are loaded!!!! ". ( hope I can keep this train running)
....The Yoga of Max's Discontent, by Karan Bajan
....The Signature of All Things, by Elizabeth Gilbert
... A God in Ruins, by Kate Atkinson
If you read my review of "Life After Life", you'll see, I wasn't 'ga-ga' over that book!!!
I didn't 'jump' for joy when this first book came out either. PASS were my first thoughts!
Overtime ... I heard and read a few things about this 'companion' novel to have me re-consider ...( enough to enter a Goodreads give-a-way). No, I didn't win...
but my local thrift box had a 'like new' copy for a dollar. ( the universe was speaking).
Plus...I had remembered months before, Goodreads member, Violet Wells, said a couple of things in her review that had me up to 'seriously considering' giving Kate Atkinson another try. I never said Atkinson wasn't a good writer...it was just that the story in "Life After Life" drove me bananas. Nails-on-a-chalkboard experience...
( with me still stuck with the scene about Ursula -sex- the doctors office and not knowing where babies come from) ... I never recovered from that situation!
Moving into "A God in Ruins".....
WOW...... *awesome* reading surprise!!! I'm sincerely surprised by how fantastic this was. Heartbreaking...real..
( so much to talk about).... Emotions FELT!!!
For me...it's all about TEDDY....( the cycle of a life)!
Teddy as a child
Teddy during the war
Teddy after the war.
Teddy is doing the storytelling. The best kind too. An adult man...telling us his life story.
I fell in love with him as a child. Funny dialogue conversations in the beginning with he and his aunt Izzy. ( I was laughing out loud)...
but soon things shifted and I felt sad for this growing young boy. Even before he was a full teen, it was easy to see this boy's integrity - his sense of purpose in life. His dreams were not just for his own adult life ...but his desires for 'his' children ...( he was only 11 years old).
That feeling never left me, ( his young self), as we see him as a young man who is passionate for flying bombers. WE GET IT!!! Even if you don't like the nitty-gritty details of 'war'...there was something very moving about how war was described through Teddy.
Teddy is an enduring character. At the beginning he seems a little aloof...with a dry even key personality. I soon realized while he did not express exuberant emotion, I was feeling tons 'for' him.
The YING & the YANG... It was a pretty ugly relationship between Teddy and his daughter Viola. As a parent ..there are so many ways to look at this tragedy..
Does it help to be angry at Viola for being a such a selfish self- centered creature?
Her children are beautiful... But unfortunately and fortunately...we see them through the eyes of Teddy (Viola wasn't dishing out an ounce of touchy-feely love energy).
In the end... "A God in Ruins" can make you want to crawl back into bed for a day and pull the covers over you. I ached!
The depth and richness from the storytelling has added new breath to mine.
I could cry just thinking of this story! WONDERFUL!!!!!
p.s. This makes 3 books in a row where they each Have been ****phenomenal****
Bases are loaded!!!! ". ( hope I can keep this train running)
....The Yoga of Max's Discontent, by Karan Bajan
....The Signature of All Things, by Elizabeth Gilbert
... A God in Ruins, by Kate Atkinson
February 20, 2024
What larks
A tale of flight. Teddy is a bird-lover, and the story is full of birds and of flying and fleeing.
His long life is marked by war: born in 1914, he becomes a bomber pilot in WW2.
“He had been reconciled to death during the war and then suddenly it was over… Part of him never adjusted to having a future.”
Teddy’s life story is told non-chronologically, in chapters labelled with the years. There’s occasional foreshadowing and rather more looking back, but it’s never confusing. Early on, we know that Teddy marries Nancy, has a daughter (Viola), grandchildren (Sunny and Bertie (Moon Roberta)), and that Nancy dies before Viola is an adult.
It’s a richly reflective and melancholic story of loss, despite elements of joy, love, and beauty. The camaraderie, experiences, stress, and superstitions of bomber crews are vividly portrayed, as is a traumatic time in Sunny’s life, aged about seven, when he’s trying to work out the illogical rules imposed on him by confused and confusing adults. It’s compounded when he’s unjustly blamed for a tragedy. Viola experiences trauma at a similar age, but the details are only revealed towards the end, so for most of the book she’s extremely and inexplicably heartless, with no redeeming qualities.
I don’t normally read war novels (that’s only one aspect of this), but found it a well-told and compelling read, despite Viola.
Image: A Eurasian skylark (Source)
Types of love
“Love had always seemed to Teddy to be a practical act as much as anything.”
There’s love of many kinds in these pages, but it’s not always a many-splendored thing.
“‘The mistake,’ Sylvie said, ‘is to think love equates with happiness.’”
There are plenty of secrets between loved-ones, sometimes to spare the other, sometimes because memories hurt, and other times for national security. But often, guilt is at the root. Is it cheating if you don’t go through with it? What about when you think you or your partner are going to die, or that your partner already has?
“Afterwards [the war]… he resolved that he would always try to be kind. It was the best he could do. It was all that he could do. And it might be love.”
Killing
A book featuring a WW2 bomber pilot can’t escape the ethics of killing, especially of civilians.
“Teddy didn’t think of them as people. They were towns.”
But it’s more passive killing that is trickier: deciding whether to save mother or baby, letting a person who is suffering die - and maybe helping them do so. Those horrified in one instance feel differently in others. Selfishness, secrecy, and guilt are a toxic combination.
Image: A Canadian Fleet Finch, similar to what Teddy learned to fly (Source)
Birds and flight
“They were not so much warriors as sacrifices for the greater good. Birds thrown against a wall in the hope that eventually, if there were enough birds, they would break that wall.”
Teddy prefers to fly than take the desk-job his rank entitles him to, and twice in his life, external constraints put him in a position where he feels like a bird whose wings have been clipped. The plot and mood repeatedly soar and descend.
More than a dozen birds are mentioned (as well as RAF planes, some of which are named after creatures and birds):
A list, not a plot spoiler
Parenting - good and very bad
There’s a huge range of parenting styles, with obviously different outcomes, exploring fate versus free will.
Image: “Nurturing”, a sculpture of two heads, by Beatrice Hoffman (Source)
Fate and ‘what if?’
This is a major and inescapable theme of the earlier book about the Todd family (Life After Life) because Teddy’s sister, Ursula, leads many different lives. In this, it’s mostly limited to occasional idle conjecture about alternatives:
“Sometimes… I think if only I could go back in time and shoot Hitler.” [Teddy]
And
“If Viola could start again - there are no second chances… but if she could... She would learn how to love.”
There is outright rejection of alternatives:
“The war had been a great chasm and there could be no going back to the other side.”
Plus some that are just for the reader: Teddy’s permission for leave to attend his father’s funeral is rescinded at the last minute. The convoy he would have gone on is bombed.
Near the end, “fractals of the future” are floated in a single paragraph.
Then, when Teddy's family think he’s dead, Ursula says to Nancy:
“I believe we have just one life, and I believe that Teddy lived his perfectly.”
See also
• This is a “companion” to Life After Life (see my review HERE), not a sequel or prequel. Whereas that explored many possible lives of Ursula Todd, this tells one life of her brother, Teddy, in a conventional way, with just the occasional nod to other possibilities, which is ironic given that . It’s probably better to read Life After Life first, but not essential.
• Just over a year ago, we visited the International Bomber Command Centre near Lincoln. Very sobering (55,573 Bomber Command crew died and 500,000 Germans, mostly civilians, were killed by the Allied bombing campaign) and far more interesting than I expected. What Atkinson writes about Teddy’s experience fits with what I learned there. If you can’t visit in person, see HERE.
• In an afterword, Atkinson acknowledges the clear similarities between Izzie Todd’s series of children’s books about Augustus Swift and Richmal Crompton’s Just William, which I reviewed briefly, HERE.
• The bohemian alternative to Scouts, Kibbo Kift, was a real organisation, HERE.
Quotes
• “The mirror was once her friend, but now she felt that it regarded her with indifference.” [Sylvie]
• “She felt as if she had been on the outside of happiness her whole life.” [Viola]
• “It was the life of an unpaid eighteenth-century servant.” [Adam’s Acre commune]
• “Sometimes Teddy wondered if everyone had done well out of the war except for those who had fought in it.”
• “They could stand at their front door and watch the weather come towards them, like an approaching foe. It lived with them, it had a personality.”
• “Sunny was much better behaved than the dogs and yet was treated much worse.” [a sort of inverse of Augustus, who was based on his grandfather, Teddy]
A tale of flight. Teddy is a bird-lover, and the story is full of birds and of flying and fleeing.
His long life is marked by war: born in 1914, he becomes a bomber pilot in WW2.
“He had been reconciled to death during the war and then suddenly it was over… Part of him never adjusted to having a future.”
Teddy’s life story is told non-chronologically, in chapters labelled with the years. There’s occasional foreshadowing and rather more looking back, but it’s never confusing. Early on, we know that Teddy marries Nancy, has a daughter (Viola), grandchildren (Sunny and Bertie (Moon Roberta)), and that Nancy dies before Viola is an adult.
It’s a richly reflective and melancholic story of loss, despite elements of joy, love, and beauty. The camaraderie, experiences, stress, and superstitions of bomber crews are vividly portrayed, as is a traumatic time in Sunny’s life, aged about seven, when he’s trying to work out the illogical rules imposed on him by confused and confusing adults. It’s compounded when he’s unjustly blamed for a tragedy. Viola experiences trauma at a similar age, but the details are only revealed towards the end, so for most of the book she’s extremely and inexplicably heartless, with no redeeming qualities.
I don’t normally read war novels (that’s only one aspect of this), but found it a well-told and compelling read, despite Viola.
Image: A Eurasian skylark (Source)
Types of love
“Love had always seemed to Teddy to be a practical act as much as anything.”
There’s love of many kinds in these pages, but it’s not always a many-splendored thing.
“‘The mistake,’ Sylvie said, ‘is to think love equates with happiness.’”
There are plenty of secrets between loved-ones, sometimes to spare the other, sometimes because memories hurt, and other times for national security. But often, guilt is at the root. Is it cheating if you don’t go through with it? What about when you think you or your partner are going to die, or that your partner already has?
“Afterwards [the war]… he resolved that he would always try to be kind. It was the best he could do. It was all that he could do. And it might be love.”
Killing
A book featuring a WW2 bomber pilot can’t escape the ethics of killing, especially of civilians.
“Teddy didn’t think of them as people. They were towns.”
But it’s more passive killing that is trickier: deciding whether to save mother or baby, letting a person who is suffering die - and maybe helping them do so. Those horrified in one instance feel differently in others. Selfishness, secrecy, and guilt are a toxic combination.
Image: A Canadian Fleet Finch, similar to what Teddy learned to fly (Source)
Birds and flight
“They were not so much warriors as sacrifices for the greater good. Birds thrown against a wall in the hope that eventually, if there were enough birds, they would break that wall.”
Teddy prefers to fly than take the desk-job his rank entitles him to, and twice in his life, external constraints put him in a position where he feels like a bird whose wings have been clipped. The plot and mood repeatedly soar and descend.
More than a dozen birds are mentioned (as well as RAF planes, some of which are named after creatures and birds):
A list, not a plot spoiler
Parenting - good and very bad
There’s a huge range of parenting styles, with obviously different outcomes, exploring fate versus free will.
Image: “Nurturing”, a sculpture of two heads, by Beatrice Hoffman (Source)
Fate and ‘what if?’
This is a major and inescapable theme of the earlier book about the Todd family (Life After Life) because Teddy’s sister, Ursula, leads many different lives. In this, it’s mostly limited to occasional idle conjecture about alternatives:
“Sometimes… I think if only I could go back in time and shoot Hitler.” [Teddy]
And
“If Viola could start again - there are no second chances… but if she could... She would learn how to love.”
There is outright rejection of alternatives:
“The war had been a great chasm and there could be no going back to the other side.”
Plus some that are just for the reader: Teddy’s permission for leave to attend his father’s funeral is rescinded at the last minute. The convoy he would have gone on is bombed.
Near the end, “fractals of the future” are floated in a single paragraph.
Then, when Teddy's family think he’s dead, Ursula says to Nancy:
“I believe we have just one life, and I believe that Teddy lived his perfectly.”
See also
• This is a “companion” to Life After Life (see my review HERE), not a sequel or prequel. Whereas that explored many possible lives of Ursula Todd, this tells one life of her brother, Teddy, in a conventional way, with just the occasional nod to other possibilities, which is ironic given that . It’s probably better to read Life After Life first, but not essential.
• Just over a year ago, we visited the International Bomber Command Centre near Lincoln. Very sobering (55,573 Bomber Command crew died and 500,000 Germans, mostly civilians, were killed by the Allied bombing campaign) and far more interesting than I expected. What Atkinson writes about Teddy’s experience fits with what I learned there. If you can’t visit in person, see HERE.
• In an afterword, Atkinson acknowledges the clear similarities between Izzie Todd’s series of children’s books about Augustus Swift and Richmal Crompton’s Just William, which I reviewed briefly, HERE.
• The bohemian alternative to Scouts, Kibbo Kift, was a real organisation, HERE.
Quotes
• “The mirror was once her friend, but now she felt that it regarded her with indifference.” [Sylvie]
• “She felt as if she had been on the outside of happiness her whole life.” [Viola]
• “It was the life of an unpaid eighteenth-century servant.” [Adam’s Acre commune]
• “Sometimes Teddy wondered if everyone had done well out of the war except for those who had fought in it.”
• “They could stand at their front door and watch the weather come towards them, like an approaching foe. It lived with them, it had a personality.”
• “Sunny was much better behaved than the dogs and yet was treated much worse.” [a sort of inverse of Augustus, who was based on his grandfather, Teddy]
July 3, 2016
Perhaps the element of this novel that most moved me was the arrogant dismissive way the young often view older generations, especially children with regards to their parents. This is highlighted in the relationship between the obnoxiously brilliant Viola and her father Teddy. Teddy is/was a Bomber Command pilot during WW2. Almost nightly he goes through the harrowing experience of flying over Nazi Germany; the repressed guilt of dropping bombs on “innocent” civilians; the awareness that his death is always a whisker away and that an entire city below is willing it; his friends are killed on a monthly basis. Yet the superbly self-centred Viola, on a constant self-sequestering quest to find a kind of hippy utopia, has no interest in her father’s history, his inner life. She looks down on him as someone less enlightened, less intimate with the important goals of experience. Late in the novel, when Viola has become a writer and her father is suffering from dementia she regrets not asking him about his wartime experiences, not because she’s interested, but because she realises it would be good material for a book. Her cynical self-interest knows no bounds.
Shelved as 'didnt-finish'
April 5, 2015I just cannot deal with Viola. Just no.
August 19, 2019
Shortly before I finished this book last night, I read of the death of Nicholas Winton, aka Britain's Schindler, at the age of 106. He lived through the same time period, with a few years' difference on either side, as Atkinson's fictional Teddy, the favorite sibling of Ursula from Life After Life. While I was immediately captured by the latter book, this companion novel took a while for me to get into as I wondered where it was going. The ultimate destination is a spoiler and I'll address my issue with that in a spoiler comment below for anyone who's curious.
Atkinson's prose style is as engaging as ever (though she must hate semicolons: see my review of One Good Turn); she's a great storyteller; and she clearly loves her characters, even the most unlovable one. The characters come by their personalities honestly as their backgrounds reveal, something that's not done slowly. Once Atkinson has you wondering about something, it's explained rather quickly, through a different time period and a different point of view.
I would've liked the book to have ended ten pages sooner. As I read the last sentence of "my" ending, my mind immediately went to the ending of D.M. Thomas's The White Hotel -- same theme but Thomas' rendering had much more of an impact on me. Following Atkinson's ending (and I understand why she chose it) is an "Author's Note." I don't usually mind these notes, but this detailed one both explained too much and seemed superfluous. I wonder if criticism to Life After Life prompted it.
I am of two minds about this book and not sure how to rate it. I enjoyed it for the most part and I agree with the theme, but the ending was deflating.
Atkinson's prose style is as engaging as ever (though she must hate semicolons: see my review of One Good Turn); she's a great storyteller; and she clearly loves her characters, even the most unlovable one. The characters come by their personalities honestly as their backgrounds reveal, something that's not done slowly. Once Atkinson has you wondering about something, it's explained rather quickly, through a different time period and a different point of view.
I would've liked the book to have ended ten pages sooner. As I read the last sentence of "my" ending, my mind immediately went to the ending of D.M. Thomas's The White Hotel -- same theme but Thomas' rendering had much more of an impact on me. Following Atkinson's ending (and I understand why she chose it) is an "Author's Note." I don't usually mind these notes, but this detailed one both explained too much and seemed superfluous. I wonder if criticism to Life After Life prompted it.
I am of two minds about this book and not sure how to rate it. I enjoyed it for the most part and I agree with the theme, but the ending was deflating.
February 22, 2017
This has been described as a sequel to Life After Life, but as Kate Atkinson says in her Author's Note at the end, "I like to think of it as a 'companion piece' rather than a sequel". It is similarly audacious and if anything even more moving, and I devoured it in three days.
This time centre stage is taken by Teddy Todd, the younger brother of Ursula, the heroine of Life After Life. The core story tells of his life as a bomber pilot in the Second World War, which is vividly described and emotionally powerful. This only accounts for about a third of the book, as Teddy's struggles with civilian life before and after the war are also described in detail, and the chapters are chronologically scattered. Even within chapters and sentences Atkinson often can't resist throwing in asides about how the perceptions and expectations of her characters are confounded, with allusions to events several decades later. This is a bit like listening to an aged relative - descriptions of the distant past interspersed with comments about more recent events. Some events are described several times in different levels of detail.
Some chapters tell the story of Teddy's daughter Viola, who is a self-centred child of the sixties who becomes a writer of popular fiction, and her relationship with her children Sunny (a boy) and Bertie (a girl). Viola is a comic caricature, and provides much of the light relief which leavens the more serious material. Viola's character is partly shaped by the early death of Ted's wife Nancy from brain cancer, and her role in the story demonstrates how quickly history is forgotten by younger generations.
It is difficult to describe the ending without resorting to spoilers, and although this is a book which would reward re-reading I won't say too much here, except that although I felt it was cleverly handled it might have been even better to end with the devastating penultimate chapter. This is a minor quibble, and overall I was greatly impressed by the range of ideas, the variety of narrative styles and the way the whole thing coalesces.
A fine book, and possibly even better than Life After Life.
This time centre stage is taken by Teddy Todd, the younger brother of Ursula, the heroine of Life After Life. The core story tells of his life as a bomber pilot in the Second World War, which is vividly described and emotionally powerful. This only accounts for about a third of the book, as Teddy's struggles with civilian life before and after the war are also described in detail, and the chapters are chronologically scattered. Even within chapters and sentences Atkinson often can't resist throwing in asides about how the perceptions and expectations of her characters are confounded, with allusions to events several decades later. This is a bit like listening to an aged relative - descriptions of the distant past interspersed with comments about more recent events. Some events are described several times in different levels of detail.
Some chapters tell the story of Teddy's daughter Viola, who is a self-centred child of the sixties who becomes a writer of popular fiction, and her relationship with her children Sunny (a boy) and Bertie (a girl). Viola is a comic caricature, and provides much of the light relief which leavens the more serious material. Viola's character is partly shaped by the early death of Ted's wife Nancy from brain cancer, and her role in the story demonstrates how quickly history is forgotten by younger generations.
It is difficult to describe the ending without resorting to spoilers, and although this is a book which would reward re-reading I won't say too much here, except that although I felt it was cleverly handled it might have been even better to end with the devastating penultimate chapter. This is a minor quibble, and overall I was greatly impressed by the range of ideas, the variety of narrative styles and the way the whole thing coalesces.
A fine book, and possibly even better than Life After Life.
October 22, 2017
EXCERPT: What had gone into the making of Teddy? Not slugs and snails, it was true, but generation upon generation of Beresfords and Todds, all coming to one singular point in a cold bed in the chill of an autumn night when his father had caught hold of the golden rope of his mother's hair and hadn't let go until he had hauled them both to the far shore (they had many euphemisms for the act). As they lay amongst the shipwreck of the marital bed they each felt slightly befuddled by the unexpected ardor of the other. Hugh cleared his throat and murmured, 'A voyage into the deep, eh?' Sylvie said nothing as she felt the seafaring metaphor had been stretched far enough.
But the grain had entered the shell (Sylvie's own metaphoric stance) and the pearl that would be Edward Beresford Todd began to grow until he was revealed into the sunshine that came before the Great War and lay happily for hours on end in his pram with nothing but a silver hare dangling from the pram hood for company.
THE BLURB: In Life After Life Ursula Todd lived through the turbulent events of the last century again and again. In A God in Ruins, Atkinson turns her focus on Ursula’s beloved younger brother Teddy – would-be poet, RAF bomber pilot, husband and father – as he navigates the perils and progress of the 20th century. For all Teddy endures in battle, his greatest challenge will be to face living in a future he never expected to have.
MY THOUGHTS: This is a complex book. There seems to be no order to it. It randomly jumps from Teddy's childhood, to his old age, to his war years and back, interspersed with the lives of his one daughter, Viola, and her two children, Sunny and Bertie, and back again.
And yet, with her own inimitable style, Kate Atkinson pulls it off and rather splendidly at that. It is like sitting with a loved elderly relative, listening to them reminisce, where one memory leads to another, the tenuous thread that connects them known only to the narrator. And yet Atkinson draws you into this family. I laughed, I cried. I seethed at Viola's indifference to her children, her father. I flew with Teddy on his sorties over Germany, crossing my fingers to keep him safe. I applauded his rescue of Sunny (aka Philip Villiers) from the Villiers enclave, and his careful nurturing of Bertie. And I wept at his gentle decline in residential care.
This is both a heart-wrenching and heartwarming read.
All opinions expressed in this review are entirely my own. Please refer to my Goodreads.com profile page or the 'about' page on sandysbookaday.wordpress.com for an explanation of my rating system. This review and others are also published on my blog sandysbookaday.wordpress.com
https://wordpress.com/post/sandysbook...
But the grain had entered the shell (Sylvie's own metaphoric stance) and the pearl that would be Edward Beresford Todd began to grow until he was revealed into the sunshine that came before the Great War and lay happily for hours on end in his pram with nothing but a silver hare dangling from the pram hood for company.
THE BLURB: In Life After Life Ursula Todd lived through the turbulent events of the last century again and again. In A God in Ruins, Atkinson turns her focus on Ursula’s beloved younger brother Teddy – would-be poet, RAF bomber pilot, husband and father – as he navigates the perils and progress of the 20th century. For all Teddy endures in battle, his greatest challenge will be to face living in a future he never expected to have.
MY THOUGHTS: This is a complex book. There seems to be no order to it. It randomly jumps from Teddy's childhood, to his old age, to his war years and back, interspersed with the lives of his one daughter, Viola, and her two children, Sunny and Bertie, and back again.
And yet, with her own inimitable style, Kate Atkinson pulls it off and rather splendidly at that. It is like sitting with a loved elderly relative, listening to them reminisce, where one memory leads to another, the tenuous thread that connects them known only to the narrator. And yet Atkinson draws you into this family. I laughed, I cried. I seethed at Viola's indifference to her children, her father. I flew with Teddy on his sorties over Germany, crossing my fingers to keep him safe. I applauded his rescue of Sunny (aka Philip Villiers) from the Villiers enclave, and his careful nurturing of Bertie. And I wept at his gentle decline in residential care.
This is both a heart-wrenching and heartwarming read.
All opinions expressed in this review are entirely my own. Please refer to my Goodreads.com profile page or the 'about' page on sandysbookaday.wordpress.com for an explanation of my rating system. This review and others are also published on my blog sandysbookaday.wordpress.com
https://wordpress.com/post/sandysbook...
May 1, 2015
“Despite the owl, which continued to hoot its unholy lullaby, he fell almost immediately into the deep and innocent sleep of the hopeful.”
First the confession. I didn’t really like Life After Life. Oh, I admit, it was a very clever idea, beautifully written, but for me, something was missing. It was all a bit random and, at times, (I may as well be honest) a wee bit annoying.
Something of a mixed blessing, then, to be sent an ARC of the “companion piece”, A God In Ruins. It’s a beautiful, limited-edition proof that will look great on the shelf, but did I really want to put myself through more of the same?
Well, I did, thank goodness, because A God In Ruins is one of the most extraordinary books I’ve ever read. It is the story of Ursula Todd’s younger brother, Teddy, who becomes a fighter pilot in World War 2, is one of the relative few to survive and who goes on to marry, have a daughter and a couple of grandchildren, and live to a ripe old age.
So what? Yes, I know, I’d be tempted to say the same if the book was ‘sold’ to me in that way. It’s difficult to explain quite why this is such an exquisite read, because there’s precious little in the way of plot, but it is testament to the sheer brilliance of Atkinson’s writing, that she can keep her reader so engaged without too much happening. Every incident, every character, is drawn with exquisite, sparkling colour, not a single detail seems superfluous and her dark, bitchy sense of humour weaves through the narrative like a glossy black ribbon.
The timeline jumps about a bit. The story is written from multiple points of view that occasionally leap up and take the reader by surprise, but otherwise I couldn’t fault this book. Well, maybe I could, just a tiny bit, because as I neared the end, I found myself thinking: ‘It’s a lovely book, but I’m not sure what the point of it is, other than the interest to be found even in very ordinary, common-place lives.’ In fairness, I’d have been happy to leave it at that, I was enjoying the read so much.
And then, oh my lord, the point!
The point of the book hit me like a blow from a sledgehammer. It made me cry. It made me feel like a complete fool. It left me in awe of Atkinson’s brilliance. It made me want to read Life After Life again. I cannot say more, just by mentioning that there is ‘something to come’ I may have already spoiled the surprise to some extent, and for that I apologise, but without referring to ‘the point’ it would be almost impossible to explain why I think this great, glorious heartbreak of a book will come to be considered one of the defining novels of our time.
PS: I did re-read Life After Life. I get it now. The rest of the world was right and I was wrong.
First the confession. I didn’t really like Life After Life. Oh, I admit, it was a very clever idea, beautifully written, but for me, something was missing. It was all a bit random and, at times, (I may as well be honest) a wee bit annoying.
Something of a mixed blessing, then, to be sent an ARC of the “companion piece”, A God In Ruins. It’s a beautiful, limited-edition proof that will look great on the shelf, but did I really want to put myself through more of the same?
Well, I did, thank goodness, because A God In Ruins is one of the most extraordinary books I’ve ever read. It is the story of Ursula Todd’s younger brother, Teddy, who becomes a fighter pilot in World War 2, is one of the relative few to survive and who goes on to marry, have a daughter and a couple of grandchildren, and live to a ripe old age.
So what? Yes, I know, I’d be tempted to say the same if the book was ‘sold’ to me in that way. It’s difficult to explain quite why this is such an exquisite read, because there’s precious little in the way of plot, but it is testament to the sheer brilliance of Atkinson’s writing, that she can keep her reader so engaged without too much happening. Every incident, every character, is drawn with exquisite, sparkling colour, not a single detail seems superfluous and her dark, bitchy sense of humour weaves through the narrative like a glossy black ribbon.
The timeline jumps about a bit. The story is written from multiple points of view that occasionally leap up and take the reader by surprise, but otherwise I couldn’t fault this book. Well, maybe I could, just a tiny bit, because as I neared the end, I found myself thinking: ‘It’s a lovely book, but I’m not sure what the point of it is, other than the interest to be found even in very ordinary, common-place lives.’ In fairness, I’d have been happy to leave it at that, I was enjoying the read so much.
And then, oh my lord, the point!
The point of the book hit me like a blow from a sledgehammer. It made me cry. It made me feel like a complete fool. It left me in awe of Atkinson’s brilliance. It made me want to read Life After Life again. I cannot say more, just by mentioning that there is ‘something to come’ I may have already spoiled the surprise to some extent, and for that I apologise, but without referring to ‘the point’ it would be almost impossible to explain why I think this great, glorious heartbreak of a book will come to be considered one of the defining novels of our time.
PS: I did re-read Life After Life. I get it now. The rest of the world was right and I was wrong.
February 17, 2016
I DNF'd this book last night.
I was so bored with A God in Ruins that I skipped the second half of the book and advanced to the end of the book.
There is a twist at the end of the story, but it was too little and too late, and I had kind of predicted it anyway.
As with Life After Life, it was not the writing that put me off. Kate Atkinson clearly has a talent for writing beautiful prose. My problem was again with the plot.
I found it very hard to get invested in the story of Teddy, the brother of Ursula from Life After Life.
A God in Ruins is not one of those books that is driven by plot, and so it relies on its characters being interesting enough to keep reading. While Teddy's daughter, Viola, could have provided this interest, Teddy didn't. I get that Teddy was a representation of the many WW2 pilots who returned from the war to lead very ordinary lives without fuss and much excitement, and I appreciate that Teddy is a tribute to those men. However, I would rather read about these men from non-fiction sources than in a fictional environment.
As for the point of the book that events and lives are interlinked and a change in one results in a ripple effect that will change others, I believe this came across quite well in Life After Life and did not need the additional elaboration of Teddy's story in A God in Ruins.
I was so bored with A God in Ruins that I skipped the second half of the book and advanced to the end of the book.
There is a twist at the end of the story, but it was too little and too late, and I had kind of predicted it anyway.
As with Life After Life, it was not the writing that put me off. Kate Atkinson clearly has a talent for writing beautiful prose. My problem was again with the plot.
I found it very hard to get invested in the story of Teddy, the brother of Ursula from Life After Life.
A God in Ruins is not one of those books that is driven by plot, and so it relies on its characters being interesting enough to keep reading. While Teddy's daughter, Viola, could have provided this interest, Teddy didn't. I get that Teddy was a representation of the many WW2 pilots who returned from the war to lead very ordinary lives without fuss and much excitement, and I appreciate that Teddy is a tribute to those men. However, I would rather read about these men from non-fiction sources than in a fictional environment.
As for the point of the book that events and lives are interlinked and a change in one results in a ripple effect that will change others, I believe this came across quite well in Life After Life and did not need the additional elaboration of Teddy's story in A God in Ruins.
August 7, 2017
Even though Kate Atkinson took readers back into the beautiful world that she created for the Todd family, this story wasn't nearly as enjoyable as Life After Life.
This time, the story focused on Teddy. It is told through the mixed up timeline that I've come to expect from Atkinson. We get to see Teddy's relationships, family and inner thoughts.
It didn't have the magic of Ursula's story, in my opinion. In Life After Life, I was enthralled. For the majority of A God in Ruins, I was not.
I was surprised that I liked very few of the characters. Viola, in particular, was awful. I realize that that is partially the point, but still- it's hard to appreciate the story when you don't like most of the major characters.
The writing was still lovely, but I didn't connect to this book the way that I did with the other one. I'm rather disappointed actually.
This time, the story focused on Teddy. It is told through the mixed up timeline that I've come to expect from Atkinson. We get to see Teddy's relationships, family and inner thoughts.
It didn't have the magic of Ursula's story, in my opinion. In Life After Life, I was enthralled. For the majority of A God in Ruins, I was not.
I was surprised that I liked very few of the characters. Viola, in particular, was awful. I realize that that is partially the point, but still- it's hard to appreciate the story when you don't like most of the major characters.
The writing was still lovely, but I didn't connect to this book the way that I did with the other one. I'm rather disappointed actually.
August 26, 2015
“The whole edifice of civilization turned out to be constructed from an unstable mix of quicksand and imagination.”
― Kate Atkinson, A God in Ruins
"It's still the same old story
A fight for love and glory
A case of do or die
The world will always welcome lovers
As time goes by"
-Frank Sinatra, As Time Goes By
In the 2013 déjà-vu epic Life After Life Kate Atkinson played out "what if?" in a loop-de-loop plot that tossed narrative structure to the wind. It is a brilliant, confounding, playful and poignant novel. A God In Ruins returns us to Fox Corner and the Todd family of Life After Life, but aware that clever conceit is best eaten while warm, Atkinson returns to a more conventional structure for this "companion" novel. Sort of.
A God In Ruins plucks Teddy Todd from Ursula Todd's war and follows his life, from RAF bomber during WWII to his final days in a nursing home in the 21st century. The trajectory is not chronological—the narrative leaps back and forth between the skies over Hamburg to Teddy's prosaic, duty-bound post-war life, foreshadowing and reflecting back on itself—but unlike Life After Life, Teddy lives but one life (I feel it necessary to say that although A God In Ruins is a standalone novel, you'd be doing yourself a terrible disservice by not reading Life After Life first. Not only is it a phenomenal read, but you will enter A God In Ruins already knowing and loving these characters and appreciating the winks and nods blithely scattered in the text).
While still presenting the artifice of fiction—in the Author's Note, Atkinson states that fiction is essentially "how we must imagine what we cannot know"—A God In Ruins is about young men and war. It is an homage to the many who do not survive and the story of how it leaves in ruins those young gods who do. The novel is built on Teddy's flashes of memory and in this way, it carries forward the sense of déjà-vu that made Life After Life such a tour de force. But Ruins is quieter, except for the breathless scenes of bomber raids that Teddy leads. The reader never knows who will return alive (90 percent of the young men who joined the WWII Bomber Command did not) and the drama is rendered in extraordinary, fever-pitch detail.
Contrasting Teddy's Greatest Generation heroics is the ridiculousness of his daughter, Viola, who Atkinson writes in caricature, almost unfairly at times. It's impossible not to laugh or smirk at Viola's irrelevant, hapless life, except when you are bemoaning her tragic neglect of her children, son Sunny and daughter Bertie (and Atkinson indulges in some terrific metafiction moments, offered like sticky Turkish Delight—Viola shuffles from indulgent hippy to pampered bestselling writer, her chipped shoulder leading the way). In a quieter display of domestic heroics, Teddy steps in as dutiful, if not overtly tender, grandfather. There is a thick scar of tension running between Viola and her father, slowly revealed as the courtship and marriage of Teddy and Viola's mother, Nancy, unfolds.
I still come cross readers who have never heard of Atkinson (whaaaaa???) or dismiss her because of the supposed-genre Jackson Brodie series. I can press her books into the hand of the innocently ignorant; the willfully ignorant don't merit the breath. Kate Atkinson is one of the finest, most versatile, humane and intelligent storytellers of our generation. Dismiss her at your own peril and loss.
If Life After Life is about beginning and beginning again, A God In Ruins is about our inevitable end. And speaking of endings, well, no, I won't. I can't. Just don't mind me for sinking to the floor, clutching at the pieces of my broken heart.
― Kate Atkinson, A God in Ruins
"It's still the same old story
A fight for love and glory
A case of do or die
The world will always welcome lovers
As time goes by"
-Frank Sinatra, As Time Goes By
In the 2013 déjà-vu epic Life After Life Kate Atkinson played out "what if?" in a loop-de-loop plot that tossed narrative structure to the wind. It is a brilliant, confounding, playful and poignant novel. A God In Ruins returns us to Fox Corner and the Todd family of Life After Life, but aware that clever conceit is best eaten while warm, Atkinson returns to a more conventional structure for this "companion" novel. Sort of.
A God In Ruins plucks Teddy Todd from Ursula Todd's war and follows his life, from RAF bomber during WWII to his final days in a nursing home in the 21st century. The trajectory is not chronological—the narrative leaps back and forth between the skies over Hamburg to Teddy's prosaic, duty-bound post-war life, foreshadowing and reflecting back on itself—but unlike Life After Life, Teddy lives but one life (I feel it necessary to say that although A God In Ruins is a standalone novel, you'd be doing yourself a terrible disservice by not reading Life After Life first. Not only is it a phenomenal read, but you will enter A God In Ruins already knowing and loving these characters and appreciating the winks and nods blithely scattered in the text).
While still presenting the artifice of fiction—in the Author's Note, Atkinson states that fiction is essentially "how we must imagine what we cannot know"—A God In Ruins is about young men and war. It is an homage to the many who do not survive and the story of how it leaves in ruins those young gods who do. The novel is built on Teddy's flashes of memory and in this way, it carries forward the sense of déjà-vu that made Life After Life such a tour de force. But Ruins is quieter, except for the breathless scenes of bomber raids that Teddy leads. The reader never knows who will return alive (90 percent of the young men who joined the WWII Bomber Command did not) and the drama is rendered in extraordinary, fever-pitch detail.
Contrasting Teddy's Greatest Generation heroics is the ridiculousness of his daughter, Viola, who Atkinson writes in caricature, almost unfairly at times. It's impossible not to laugh or smirk at Viola's irrelevant, hapless life, except when you are bemoaning her tragic neglect of her children, son Sunny and daughter Bertie (and Atkinson indulges in some terrific metafiction moments, offered like sticky Turkish Delight—Viola shuffles from indulgent hippy to pampered bestselling writer, her chipped shoulder leading the way). In a quieter display of domestic heroics, Teddy steps in as dutiful, if not overtly tender, grandfather. There is a thick scar of tension running between Viola and her father, slowly revealed as the courtship and marriage of Teddy and Viola's mother, Nancy, unfolds.
I still come cross readers who have never heard of Atkinson (whaaaaa???) or dismiss her because of the supposed-genre Jackson Brodie series. I can press her books into the hand of the innocently ignorant; the willfully ignorant don't merit the breath. Kate Atkinson is one of the finest, most versatile, humane and intelligent storytellers of our generation. Dismiss her at your own peril and loss.
If Life After Life is about beginning and beginning again, A God In Ruins is about our inevitable end. And speaking of endings, well, no, I won't. I can't. Just don't mind me for sinking to the floor, clutching at the pieces of my broken heart.
November 2, 2015
I hated myself for not loving this book. I was stunned by Life after Life. I waited anxiously for this book. And while I did love many parts, I didn't like others. Atkinson is a wonderful writer, her characters are all interesting and unique. Her stories are quite compelling, disturbing, historically perfect. I ate up everything, except for the actual war stories. While Teddy was flying, piloting, I found myself skipping over those parts. They held no interest for me, and I was mad at myself but I couldn't read them. I felt like I was watching an old black and white war movie. Which I suppose, is actually a compliment because that's kind of what it was.
Every single character was wonderful in their own way. I loved Teddy. I cheered for him, I cried for him. While I was a bit disappointed in spots, there were others that were miraculous, that made my heart soar. The ending gave me goosebumps.
I wish I could give this 4 stars, I know I am in the minority here, but much of the reading was almost a chore. I'm glad I finished it, and I definitely would recommend it. I just didn't love it.
Every single character was wonderful in their own way. I loved Teddy. I cheered for him, I cried for him. While I was a bit disappointed in spots, there were others that were miraculous, that made my heart soar. The ending gave me goosebumps.
I wish I could give this 4 stars, I know I am in the minority here, but much of the reading was almost a chore. I'm glad I finished it, and I definitely would recommend it. I just didn't love it.
May 13, 2016
I regret so much that I never got back to write a review close to when I finished reading this book. It's unfair to my reading experience, the book and the author. But I didn't want to leave this spot empty forever so I will add a bit. For those who have read Life After Life, I definitely recommend this. For those who haven't, it likely will stand alone but will lose some of it's meaning because of the inter-related stories.
I am going to include what I wrote in a late status update when I finished the book: What a ride Atkinson takes us on. One of my early text notes spoke to Teddy reliving his life figuratively while Ursula relived it in reality. Now I must amend this a bit. I see Ursula's life as integration and Teddy's as disintegration: so many forces at play on him. I won't go into that further but I will say this was a very satisfying novel, if not quite as spectacular as Life After Life.
Atkinson is one of my favorite authors. She takes risks with her characters and her readers. I will read her next book and have some of her backlog to catch up with (thankfully).
I rate this 4.5*, just slightly behind Life After Life.
I am going to include what I wrote in a late status update when I finished the book: What a ride Atkinson takes us on. One of my early text notes spoke to Teddy reliving his life figuratively while Ursula relived it in reality. Now I must amend this a bit. I see Ursula's life as integration and Teddy's as disintegration: so many forces at play on him. I won't go into that further but I will say this was a very satisfying novel, if not quite as spectacular as Life After Life.
Atkinson is one of my favorite authors. She takes risks with her characters and her readers. I will read her next book and have some of her backlog to catch up with (thankfully).
I rate this 4.5*, just slightly behind Life After Life.
August 2, 2015
"A man is a God in ruins. When men are innocent, life shall be longer, and shall pass into the immortal,as gently as we awake from dreams" - Ralph Waldo Emerson
In this companion piece to Life After Life Atkinson writes about Teddy Todd: beloved younger brother of Ursula, would-be poet, husband, father, grandfather, World War II bomber pilot. In it, she breathes life into themes that are both extraordinary and mundane: the shortness and fragility of life, the certainty of death, the fall from grace that is war, the redemptive power of love, the artifice and reality of fiction. All are dealt in Atkinson's intelligent and quirky style.
I fell in love with Teddy and I wept for all young people whose lives are ruined by war and who miss out on what otherwise could have been. Atkinson made me laugh and she made me cry. She made me think and she left me profoundly shaken. How could I ask for anything more from a novel?
July 15, 2018
3.5 stars
This second book in the 'Todd Family' saga concentates on Teddy Todd. It works well as a standalone.
*****
"A God in Ruins" revolves around Teddy Todd, who - in a nutshell - grew up in the English countryside, was the apple of his mother's eye, lost his loving father, was close to his sister Ursula, became a bomber pilot in WWII, married his childhood sweetheart, worked as a journalist, had a horrid narcissistic daughter, helped raise his grandchildren, got old, and died.
The book repeatedly pings back and forth in time, covering incidents from Teddy's childhood to his very old age. Overall, we see Teddy as a happy child, growing up and going to college, traveling in Europe, joining the RAF, dropping bombs on Germany. becoming a POW, having a relatively good marriage, dealing with a difficult daughter, encouraging a seemingly inept grandson, taking a nostalgic trip with his grown granddaughter, moving to assisted living, dying in a nursing home.....and lots of things in between.
The book doesn't lend itself to review as a story with a linear plot so I'll just highlight aspects that stood out for me.
Some of the most vivid scenes in the book describe Teddy and his bomber team (navigator, radio operator, bomb aimer, gunners, etc.) on their forays into enemy territory. The relatively slow, lumbering bombers took off from an English airfield, flew in the dark - often for many hours - and were easy targets for both groundfire and enemy fighter planes. Moreover, to Teddy's chagrin (as he found out after the war) the early bombers were often wildly inaccurate, blitzing civilians rather than the intended industrial targets. The author's deft writing brings Teddy's RAF companions to life, and I liked and sympathized with them as they fought and often died.
In the course of the story Teddy has a philosophical discussion with his sister about the morality of bombing Germany to smithereens. Teddy seems to feel no guilt about this, apparently believing that all's fair in war and you do what you have to do. For me, this seems like an understandable attitude but other readers may feel differently.
After the war,Teddy marries his fiancé Nancy and they have a daughter named Viola. Little Viola is a sweet child, very attached to her mom. Sadly, Nancy dies young and Viola blames Teddy, is overwhelmed with grief, and - perhaps because of this (but who knows) - evolves into a selfish, self-absorbed woman, oblivious to the needs of others. Viola is almost a caricature of a 'flower child', taking up a hippie lifestyle, living on communes, becoming a vegetarian, and having one boyfriend (or husband) after another. Viola eventually has a son she calls 'Sunny' and a daughter she calls 'Moon', being too carefree (or lazy) to choose conventional names. Moon, who renames herself 'Bertie', is an insightful child that has Viola's number from the get-go.
In any case, Viola soon abandons her children, leaving them in Teddy's care. In one of the more disturbing sections of the book Viola sends 7-year-old Sunny to live with his bipolar father's family. The poor little tyke's 'grandmama' belongs to the neglectful school of child-rearing. She provides no love or nurturing, very little food, and criticizes Sunny (who she calls Philip) constantly. Grandmama is also determined to send little Sunny to boarding school so he can grow up and continue the family name. Sunny is miserable but gets his own back a bit when - prevented from reaching the bathroom in time by Grandmama - he takes a dump on the living room carpet (ha ha ha).
It's also clear that Viola has little love or time for her father Teddy who - especially when he gets on in years - she regards as a burden and annoyance. Mostly Viola seems to covet Teddy's more valuable possessions.
Viola eventually becomes a successful novelist and makes some half-hearted attempts to reconnect with her children, but it's too little too late. Bertie's attitude toward her mom is especially knowing and sardonic and Sunny takes off for foreign shores.
Teddy himself comes across as a handsome, affable, intelligent man who tries to live a good life and be a good person. As a youth, however, Teddy has a rather flexible moral code. Even though he's engaged to his sweetheart Nancy during WWII, Teddy has no hesitation about romance and sex with other women, the apparent explanation being that pilots had a very short life expectancy. Still, after the war Teddy is a loyal husband and loving grandpa who's largely responsible for the happiness and success his grandchildren eventually achieve.
In lighter parts of the story, Teddy - as a child - is the model for his Aunt Izzy's series of children's books about 'Augustus', a hilariously naughty little boy. The tales of Augustus sprinkled through the book are fun and entertaining. Teddy also has several dogs as the story unfolds, and one sweet pooch serves as the mascot for his bomber team. I got a kick out of these endearing pets.
I expected to really like this book, which has garnered high praise from critics and readers. And I do think the book is well-written with characters that are vivid and believable. Still, I didn't enjoy the book as much as I'd hoped. It felt too long and slow-moving and I found myself wishing it was finished.
Still, I recommend the book to fans of literary fiction.
You can follow my reviews at https://reviewsbybarbsaffer.blogspot....
January 18, 2016
This novel is why I read.
I first met Kate Atkinson in Life after Life, which, while not quite being a five-star read for me, made me want to explore her work further. A God in Ruins, a companion to Life after Life, revisits the same characters and adds layers of story and understanding to the lives of the Todd family. (You do not have to read Life after Life first; they are not chronologically sequenced).
The heart of this novel is Teddy, an RAF bomber pilot in World War II, the sister of Ursula in Life after Life, the father of Viola and grandfather of Sonny and Bertie/Roberta. They are our central players in this novel which weaves back and forth in time, letting a scene in the future unfold here, going back into the past and filling in a bit of backstory there – like a giant patchwork gradually taking shape.
The novel is above all rich, and there is so much to love in it. Here is my incomplete list (which includes both ‘items’ from the story and the author’s tools):
Teddy’s love for Sonny
The dogs
The depiction of Sonny’s childhood (raw, ruthless but oh, so honest)
Teddy’s interlude with Julia and her family’s art (and the loss of a Rembrandt)
The relationship between Teddy and his flight crew
Viola’s regrets, ultimately
Atkinson’s sardonic comments sprinkled throughout a narrative that is fundamentally warm
Her knowing insights into family dynamics
Her allusions and direct references to numerous other works of literature, incl. Bleak House,
Anna Karenina, Little Women, Anne of Green Gables, Hans Christian Andersen’s The Wild
Swans, A Room with a View, Barchester Towers, The Pilgrim’s Progress
But most of all the novel’s holy trinity of humour, heart and intelligence; or plot, prose and
characters – plausible, flawed and multifaceted characters – all serving the higher purpose of a
narrative whose themes and images are set in motion by the same characters. Like Teddy’s bomber
itself, character and theme are sent spinning into the air and only gradually (in the beginning, the
lack of chronology was confusing) form a pattern, the jigsaw finally forming what was –
- a life.
What I didn’t like:
The cover. It doesn’t half measure up to the beautiful cover of my copy of Life after Life
and, more importantly, belies the richness of the book itself. But I suppose that is a detail. And it was the only thing I didn't like.
There were times when the way Atkinson uses language reminded me of Julian Barnes’s writing,
for instance in her repetition of images and thematic phrases like The dead were legion. (The
gods had their own secret agenda) + (…) and so they continued throwing the birds against the wall,
and still the wall stood, the latter a recantation of the act of killing during the war – and its
hopeless contribution to a solution. (Another repeated, concrete symbol was a small, silver hare
with an ivory teething ring attached to it, which touches several of the Todd’s lives and which
Teddy carries with him as a talisman when he is on his ‘tours’ (bombing raids). This touched me
because, incredibly, I had one such silver hare with an ivory teething ring when I was a baby).
The novel is about the devastations of wars, of World War II on its participants; of growing up and
growing old, of joys and disappointments, but ultimately it is about fiction, the fiction of stories, the fiction of our lives and what we make of them in the face of atrocities – war, illness, family
disillusionment. There were scenes that nearly broke my heart, and there were episodes that made
me laugh out loud. As the publishers might have described Kate Atkinson on the cover of the book:
a writer at the height of her powers. I loved this book.
I first met Kate Atkinson in Life after Life, which, while not quite being a five-star read for me, made me want to explore her work further. A God in Ruins, a companion to Life after Life, revisits the same characters and adds layers of story and understanding to the lives of the Todd family. (You do not have to read Life after Life first; they are not chronologically sequenced).
The heart of this novel is Teddy, an RAF bomber pilot in World War II, the sister of Ursula in Life after Life, the father of Viola and grandfather of Sonny and Bertie/Roberta. They are our central players in this novel which weaves back and forth in time, letting a scene in the future unfold here, going back into the past and filling in a bit of backstory there – like a giant patchwork gradually taking shape.
The novel is above all rich, and there is so much to love in it. Here is my incomplete list (which includes both ‘items’ from the story and the author’s tools):
Teddy’s love for Sonny
The dogs
The depiction of Sonny’s childhood (raw, ruthless but oh, so honest)
Teddy’s interlude with Julia and her family’s art (and the loss of a Rembrandt)
The relationship between Teddy and his flight crew
Viola’s regrets, ultimately
Atkinson’s sardonic comments sprinkled throughout a narrative that is fundamentally warm
Her knowing insights into family dynamics
Her allusions and direct references to numerous other works of literature, incl. Bleak House,
Anna Karenina, Little Women, Anne of Green Gables, Hans Christian Andersen’s The Wild
Swans, A Room with a View, Barchester Towers, The Pilgrim’s Progress
But most of all the novel’s holy trinity of humour, heart and intelligence; or plot, prose and
characters – plausible, flawed and multifaceted characters – all serving the higher purpose of a
narrative whose themes and images are set in motion by the same characters. Like Teddy’s bomber
itself, character and theme are sent spinning into the air and only gradually (in the beginning, the
lack of chronology was confusing) form a pattern, the jigsaw finally forming what was –
- a life.
What I didn’t like:
The cover. It doesn’t half measure up to the beautiful cover of my copy of Life after Life
and, more importantly, belies the richness of the book itself. But I suppose that is a detail. And it was the only thing I didn't like.
There were times when the way Atkinson uses language reminded me of Julian Barnes’s writing,
for instance in her repetition of images and thematic phrases like The dead were legion. (The
gods had their own secret agenda) + (…) and so they continued throwing the birds against the wall,
and still the wall stood, the latter a recantation of the act of killing during the war – and its
hopeless contribution to a solution. (Another repeated, concrete symbol was a small, silver hare
with an ivory teething ring attached to it, which touches several of the Todd’s lives and which
Teddy carries with him as a talisman when he is on his ‘tours’ (bombing raids). This touched me
because, incredibly, I had one such silver hare with an ivory teething ring when I was a baby).
The novel is about the devastations of wars, of World War II on its participants; of growing up and
growing old, of joys and disappointments, but ultimately it is about fiction, the fiction of stories, the fiction of our lives and what we make of them in the face of atrocities – war, illness, family
disillusionment. There were scenes that nearly broke my heart, and there were episodes that made
me laugh out loud. As the publishers might have described Kate Atkinson on the cover of the book:
a writer at the height of her powers. I loved this book.
May 27, 2015
Atkinson returns to her theme of “What If” in this companion volume to Life After Life in which we met Ursula Todd and many possible iterations of her life. Ursula’s brother Teddy and his family take center stage in this novel and the generation gap is caught beautifully as Atkinson articulates the view from Ted and that of his only daughter, Viola. Viola’s son and daughter, Sunny and Bertie, exhibit an equal distance from understanding their own mother’s life choices and personality.
Kate Atkinson adds an Author’s Note at the end of this story which tells us much of what she was communicating in this novel. “It is about fiction,” she tells us. “We must imagine what we cannot know.” Atkinson chose to look at the Second World War, and makes her central character an RAF airman. Teddy, we wonder at the end, does he even exist? That’s the thing about fiction. All that attention, care, and love lavished, and in the end, they are only characters on paper. But Atkinson caught enough truth in her writing that we know these characters, Ted, Viola, Sunny, are real enough within each of us.
What I like best about Atkinson’s work is her sense of humor about the tragedies of human life. She is a wonderful storyteller on the order of a Bruegel painting: large canvas, detailed figures not all doing the good and great thing. She gives us history, and we see the now, but we also get potential for the future. She does not leave us feeling that the thoughtful or erudite must be gloomy or humorless. With this two-book fiction, she gives us enough distance to see possible outcomes of decisions made now, and we always have the sense that we can change the outcomes if we don’t like where we’re headed. Her characters are complex enough to exhibit the petty and the grand. Once again, we always have a sense of possibility: character is malleable! We can change.
Atkinson tells us that this novel is “about fiction…and the Fall of Man from grace.” She indicates many references in the novel to Utopia, the Garden, the Way and then the falling, rising pattern of the characters, birds, planes correspond to what she is trying to convey. War is a fall from grace. And no matter how we frame the argument, innocents become victims. Atkinson reiterates that she is not a polemicist so wants her characters instead to express doubt and insecurity about the notion of the efficacy of war.
The thing about Atkinson’s fiction is that it is capacious enough to include the traditions of the past with the irresistible freshness and piquancy and social criticism of now. She does a marvelous job of telling a rip-snorting story at the same time she is urging caution. She was always a wonderful writer of fiction. She is in the process of becoming a great one.
A word about the audio production of this title: Hachette Audio did a brilliant job of producing this audio, read with terrific understanding by Alex Jennings. It is highly recommended. However, if one is familiar with Kate Atkinson's work, one will note that Atkinson has a tendency to move easily and quickly forward and back in time and between outlooks of various characters. One shift that was particularly difficult for me to catch in the audio was the story of Augustus. At the end, when I realized the importance of Augustus, I had to admit I didn't understand where he fit in. One glance at the paper copy set things straight for me since Augustus' story is set in different type in paper.
Kate Atkinson adds an Author’s Note at the end of this story which tells us much of what she was communicating in this novel. “It is about fiction,” she tells us. “We must imagine what we cannot know.” Atkinson chose to look at the Second World War, and makes her central character an RAF airman. Teddy, we wonder at the end, does he even exist? That’s the thing about fiction. All that attention, care, and love lavished, and in the end, they are only characters on paper. But Atkinson caught enough truth in her writing that we know these characters, Ted, Viola, Sunny, are real enough within each of us.
What I like best about Atkinson’s work is her sense of humor about the tragedies of human life. She is a wonderful storyteller on the order of a Bruegel painting: large canvas, detailed figures not all doing the good and great thing. She gives us history, and we see the now, but we also get potential for the future. She does not leave us feeling that the thoughtful or erudite must be gloomy or humorless. With this two-book fiction, she gives us enough distance to see possible outcomes of decisions made now, and we always have the sense that we can change the outcomes if we don’t like where we’re headed. Her characters are complex enough to exhibit the petty and the grand. Once again, we always have a sense of possibility: character is malleable! We can change.
Atkinson tells us that this novel is “about fiction…and the Fall of Man from grace.” She indicates many references in the novel to Utopia, the Garden, the Way and then the falling, rising pattern of the characters, birds, planes correspond to what she is trying to convey. War is a fall from grace. And no matter how we frame the argument, innocents become victims. Atkinson reiterates that she is not a polemicist so wants her characters instead to express doubt and insecurity about the notion of the efficacy of war.
The thing about Atkinson’s fiction is that it is capacious enough to include the traditions of the past with the irresistible freshness and piquancy and social criticism of now. She does a marvelous job of telling a rip-snorting story at the same time she is urging caution. She was always a wonderful writer of fiction. She is in the process of becoming a great one.
A word about the audio production of this title: Hachette Audio did a brilliant job of producing this audio, read with terrific understanding by Alex Jennings. It is highly recommended. However, if one is familiar with Kate Atkinson's work, one will note that Atkinson has a tendency to move easily and quickly forward and back in time and between outlooks of various characters. One shift that was particularly difficult for me to catch in the audio was the story of Augustus. At the end, when I realized the importance of Augustus, I had to admit I didn't understand where he fit in. One glance at the paper copy set things straight for me since Augustus' story is set in different type in paper.
September 2, 2016
Teddy Todd is a character from Kate Atkinson's earlier novel Life After Life. He is the beloved baby brother, and favorite son at Fox Corner, the Todd family home in the London suburbs. He grows up to be a bomber pilot in World War II and is either killed on a risky mission toward the end of the war or goes on to live a long life as a husband, father and grandfather. Atkinson considers both scenarios, but this novel focuses on the latter. She calls this a companion piece to Life After Life, which is about Ursula, Teddy's older sister, and her multiple lives. I fell in love with all the Todds, so I approached this with high expectations.
Whereas, Life After Life is about life's possibilities, this is fundamentally about making the best of the vicissitudes of the ordinary. Teddy "had been reconciled to death during the war and then suddenly the war was over and there was a next day and a next day and a next day. Part of him never adjusted to having a future." If he was powerless to shape his future, he was determined to live his life with integrity and "he resolved that he would try always to be kind. It was the best he could do. It was all that he could do. And it might be love, after all."
The title comes from Ralph Waldo Emerson: “A man is a god in ruins. When men are innocent, life shall be longer, and shall pass into the immortal, as gently as we awake from dreams.” Flight is a recurring theme. When Teddy and Ursula attend a performance of Beethoven's Ninth in war-torn London, "Teddy resolved to simply feel the music and stopped searching for words to describe it, and by the time the fourth movement came around and Roy Henderson, the baritone, began to sing ( O Freude! ), the hairs on the back of his neck were standing up. In her seat beside him, Ursula was almost quivering with the power of emotion, like a coiled spring, a bird ready to rise from the ground at any moment. Towards the end of the final movement, when the magnificence of the Choral becomes almost unbearable, Teddy had the odd sensation that he might actually have to hold on to his sister to prevent her rising into the air and taking flight."
Passages like this suggest to me that Atkinson has been touched by the divine. If she never wrote another word, this novel should assure her place in the pantheon of World Literature.
http://www.npr.org/2015/06/08/4116967...
Whereas, Life After Life is about life's possibilities, this is fundamentally about making the best of the vicissitudes of the ordinary. Teddy "had been reconciled to death during the war and then suddenly the war was over and there was a next day and a next day and a next day. Part of him never adjusted to having a future." If he was powerless to shape his future, he was determined to live his life with integrity and "he resolved that he would try always to be kind. It was the best he could do. It was all that he could do. And it might be love, after all."
The title comes from Ralph Waldo Emerson: “A man is a god in ruins. When men are innocent, life shall be longer, and shall pass into the immortal, as gently as we awake from dreams.” Flight is a recurring theme. When Teddy and Ursula attend a performance of Beethoven's Ninth in war-torn London, "Teddy resolved to simply feel the music and stopped searching for words to describe it, and by the time the fourth movement came around and Roy Henderson, the baritone, began to sing ( O Freude! ), the hairs on the back of his neck were standing up. In her seat beside him, Ursula was almost quivering with the power of emotion, like a coiled spring, a bird ready to rise from the ground at any moment. Towards the end of the final movement, when the magnificence of the Choral becomes almost unbearable, Teddy had the odd sensation that he might actually have to hold on to his sister to prevent her rising into the air and taking flight."
Passages like this suggest to me that Atkinson has been touched by the divine. If she never wrote another word, this novel should assure her place in the pantheon of World Literature.
http://www.npr.org/2015/06/08/4116967...
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
June 25, 2015
“The dead were legion, and remembrance was a kind of duty…not always related to love.”
This is Atkinson’s companion piece (her words) to Life After Life, the story of the privileged Todd family in Fox Corner, in England, with WW II as the highlight of events. A GOD IN RUINS could be read without having read the previous novel, but it has so much more meaning if you read them both. This is a tour de force, and after having closed the last page in tears, and meditated on this astounding book, perhaps I am ready to attempt some sort of review, or at least some reflections. However, I feel so inadequate to convey the brilliance of this luminous novel.
Life After Life focused on the upbringing of the five Todd children, especially Ursula (the third), who, via Atkinson’s effective device, died and was reborn (as Ursula again) many times. These numerous iterations of Ursula didn’t come across as contrived, as it didn’t depend on the device itself to execute the theme and heft of the story. Rather, Ursula’s many lives deepened her character, and also elucidated how civilization views, revises, and categorizes history, and how the construct of memories are as impermanent as a day.
It is the ephemeral nature of life, and our construct of memories in making the chronicle of past events permanent, that are explored so well in both these novels. There are many themes that abound in the Todd family struggles—love, family, authenticity, loss, renewal, and perception, among others. But, what struck me most was the outcome of a battered era, when war is over--missed connections, misunderstandings, and isolation. How to live a future when you are carrying a burden of a damaged past?
Atkinson pulls off an epic tale of history, seen through the eyes of one family, with compelling genre-bending talent. This book focuses on Ursula’s brother, Teddy, an RAF bomber during WW II--the squadron leader--fierce, courageous, heroic---who saw war in all its savagery, as he bombed whole cities and watched them burn from an aerial distance. There were times when the raw beauty of the flames down below were poetic—what a paradox—how killing the innocent had a feral beauty to it.
“The coloured lights were joined by the bright quick flashes of the high explosives…and everywhere there was the enchanting twinkling of white lights as thousands upon thousands of incendiaries rained down on the city.” (Hamburg burning)
Both Teddy and Ursula understood the complex dualities of war--enough to understand that, in order to stay alive, and fulfill your duty as a military servant, there can be no equivocating in the field--or in the air. Only later, when it is history, can the lens shift to judgment. Judging in hindsight wreaks the havoc of guilt and the righteousness of war. Teddy, postwar, was a diminished self--quiet, passive, accepting, but full of kindness and generosity. Unfortunately, he couldn't convey his feelings with any passion, and the war figure of Teddy was subsumed and mostly forgotten. Moreover, Teddy's love for his wife and childhood sweetheart, Nancy, lacked passion. But he was devoted to her, with a robust dependability.
The metaphor of war--its brutal, tyrannizing power--can also be assigned to the seismic misunderstanding in families--in this case, Teddy's daughter, Viola, who was in a solitary battle with her father. Once her mother died, she felt abandoned and betrayed, and, although she herself abandoned her children, (several times) for her selfish quests, she wouldn't forgive her father for being the parent who stayed alive to raise her.
Atkinson’s postmodern-ish narrative is told through the lens of time periods and generations regularly juxtaposed, the structure of which would fall apart in the hands of a lesser author. She splices time into slivers, really, yet seamlessly segues and alternates time so that when one passage jumps a generation back and forth, it gives weight not just to what is happening now, but what happened before, and what will occur in the future. The author allows us to see particular scenes from multi-perspectives—not just from different characters, but sometimes one character remembering multiple times, at a later or earlier occasion. Sublime.
Atkinson also winks at us with references to Life After Life. Certain events that happened offstage in LAL are illuminated here, and she executes the inverse flawlessly, also; she periodically pulls us offstage in her new book with nods to major events from LAL. The past and present are wrapped around each other, days of future passed. Time is not a banner laid out linearly, but rather a gossamer and vertical mass of bridged and dissonant memories.
Teddy lives to be almost a century old (as we learn early on), and throughout the novel, the narrative see-saws from Teddy the child, in the mid 1920s, to Teddy the Bomber pilot during the war, later as a husband and father, then a loving grandfather, and then as a dying old man. Even though we know the outline of the future—Atkinson purposely telegraphs events—I was emotionally blitzed by her phenomenal storytelling, as she fills in the spaces of scenarios and allows us to see deeper into her characters.
This will undoubtedly go down as one of my top 25 novels of a lifetime. I don't think that Kate Atkinson is finished with the Todd family yet. There's Bertie (Roberta) and Sunny, Teddy's beloved grandchildren, and then there are the lives of those that were only casually referenced. The author may choose to place them on center stage. I can't imagine Teddy as an offhand character; however, the author is a wizard at pulling her characters into the light, or dissolving them into the darkness.
This is Atkinson’s companion piece (her words) to Life After Life, the story of the privileged Todd family in Fox Corner, in England, with WW II as the highlight of events. A GOD IN RUINS could be read without having read the previous novel, but it has so much more meaning if you read them both. This is a tour de force, and after having closed the last page in tears, and meditated on this astounding book, perhaps I am ready to attempt some sort of review, or at least some reflections. However, I feel so inadequate to convey the brilliance of this luminous novel.
Life After Life focused on the upbringing of the five Todd children, especially Ursula (the third), who, via Atkinson’s effective device, died and was reborn (as Ursula again) many times. These numerous iterations of Ursula didn’t come across as contrived, as it didn’t depend on the device itself to execute the theme and heft of the story. Rather, Ursula’s many lives deepened her character, and also elucidated how civilization views, revises, and categorizes history, and how the construct of memories are as impermanent as a day.
It is the ephemeral nature of life, and our construct of memories in making the chronicle of past events permanent, that are explored so well in both these novels. There are many themes that abound in the Todd family struggles—love, family, authenticity, loss, renewal, and perception, among others. But, what struck me most was the outcome of a battered era, when war is over--missed connections, misunderstandings, and isolation. How to live a future when you are carrying a burden of a damaged past?
Atkinson pulls off an epic tale of history, seen through the eyes of one family, with compelling genre-bending talent. This book focuses on Ursula’s brother, Teddy, an RAF bomber during WW II--the squadron leader--fierce, courageous, heroic---who saw war in all its savagery, as he bombed whole cities and watched them burn from an aerial distance. There were times when the raw beauty of the flames down below were poetic—what a paradox—how killing the innocent had a feral beauty to it.
“The coloured lights were joined by the bright quick flashes of the high explosives…and everywhere there was the enchanting twinkling of white lights as thousands upon thousands of incendiaries rained down on the city.” (Hamburg burning)
Both Teddy and Ursula understood the complex dualities of war--enough to understand that, in order to stay alive, and fulfill your duty as a military servant, there can be no equivocating in the field--or in the air. Only later, when it is history, can the lens shift to judgment. Judging in hindsight wreaks the havoc of guilt and the righteousness of war. Teddy, postwar, was a diminished self--quiet, passive, accepting, but full of kindness and generosity. Unfortunately, he couldn't convey his feelings with any passion, and the war figure of Teddy was subsumed and mostly forgotten. Moreover, Teddy's love for his wife and childhood sweetheart, Nancy, lacked passion. But he was devoted to her, with a robust dependability.
The metaphor of war--its brutal, tyrannizing power--can also be assigned to the seismic misunderstanding in families--in this case, Teddy's daughter, Viola, who was in a solitary battle with her father. Once her mother died, she felt abandoned and betrayed, and, although she herself abandoned her children, (several times) for her selfish quests, she wouldn't forgive her father for being the parent who stayed alive to raise her.
Atkinson’s postmodern-ish narrative is told through the lens of time periods and generations regularly juxtaposed, the structure of which would fall apart in the hands of a lesser author. She splices time into slivers, really, yet seamlessly segues and alternates time so that when one passage jumps a generation back and forth, it gives weight not just to what is happening now, but what happened before, and what will occur in the future. The author allows us to see particular scenes from multi-perspectives—not just from different characters, but sometimes one character remembering multiple times, at a later or earlier occasion. Sublime.
Atkinson also winks at us with references to Life After Life. Certain events that happened offstage in LAL are illuminated here, and she executes the inverse flawlessly, also; she periodically pulls us offstage in her new book with nods to major events from LAL. The past and present are wrapped around each other, days of future passed. Time is not a banner laid out linearly, but rather a gossamer and vertical mass of bridged and dissonant memories.
Teddy lives to be almost a century old (as we learn early on), and throughout the novel, the narrative see-saws from Teddy the child, in the mid 1920s, to Teddy the Bomber pilot during the war, later as a husband and father, then a loving grandfather, and then as a dying old man. Even though we know the outline of the future—Atkinson purposely telegraphs events—I was emotionally blitzed by her phenomenal storytelling, as she fills in the spaces of scenarios and allows us to see deeper into her characters.
This will undoubtedly go down as one of my top 25 novels of a lifetime. I don't think that Kate Atkinson is finished with the Todd family yet. There's Bertie (Roberta) and Sunny, Teddy's beloved grandchildren, and then there are the lives of those that were only casually referenced. The author may choose to place them on center stage. I can't imagine Teddy as an offhand character; however, the author is a wizard at pulling her characters into the light, or dissolving them into the darkness.
January 3, 2015
I received an ARC of this from the publisher. The cover of the book reads: What if the new Kate Atkinson were even better than the last? Well, A God in Ruins is in some ways similar to Life After Life. It’s a companion piece, built along a similarly complex timeline and focusing on the life of Ursula Todd’s younger brother Teddy; his part in the War; his marriage; his reluctant navigation of the perilous, shifting waters of the twentieth century. Like all Kate Atkinson’s work, it is a masterly piece of writing; the prose is clear and elegant; sometimes wryly humorous; often touching and with a wistful awareness of passing time that underpins the narrative with a constant sense of melancholy.
There is, however, an odd disparity between the portrayal of the characters – those of the older generation are lovingly and richly drawn, while the younger ones (and most of the minor characters) are often prone to caricature and stereotype. We have characters coded according to accent, region, hair colour, social class and the kind of newspaper they read; and Viola, Teddy’s daughter, embodies every hippie cliché there is (Vegetarianism, life in a commune, homespun clothing, lentils, a couple of children named Sun and Moon). There’s also a tendency to characterize through little asides, helpfully delivered by other members of the cast, as if anticipating questions from an eventual readers’ group. Thus, at one point, Teddy asks himself if his assessment of his daughter’s personality counts as cod-psychology (it does); later, he muses, rather self-consciously, that Viola’s difficult character may have been shaped by her mother’s early death (it has). It is a kind of ironic wink to the reader – but that irony is also the means of keeping us at a distance; of reminding us that we are simply reading fragments of narrative on a page. I love Kate Atkinson’s writing. It is beautiful and perfectly-pitched - but there is an emotional detachment to her narrative that I have always found a little frustrating. To me, it often seems aloof, teasing the emotions, but deliberately withdrawing the hand just before it reaches the heart. Brilliant but (this may be my fault) ultimately, leaving me cold.
February 18, 2024
For an anglophile like myself, Kate Atkinson is more addictive than crack. She's a wordsmith of the first order. I've yet to read Life After Life, the companion predecessor to A God In Ruins, but I had no trouble immersing myself in Atkinson's universe.
I was somewhat taken back by Atkinson's depiction of love and attachment. Many of her characters are pragmatic about coupling and seem hardily stoic when it comes to infidelity, divorce and/or death. Maybe that's the British way. The stiff upper lip. Or maybe that's Atkinson's personality pushing through. Either way, I found it added to the wonderful ambiance of the novel. No forced sentimentality here.
Teddy's non-linear progression through the stages of his life gave me pause. I could see a bit of myself in his character, and it made me a little sad. Time, like a good novel, seems to pass far too quickly.
I'm looking forward to more of Atkinson's pennings; she has officially captured my interest.
I was somewhat taken back by Atkinson's depiction of love and attachment. Many of her characters are pragmatic about coupling and seem hardily stoic when it comes to infidelity, divorce and/or death. Maybe that's the British way. The stiff upper lip. Or maybe that's Atkinson's personality pushing through. Either way, I found it added to the wonderful ambiance of the novel. No forced sentimentality here.
Teddy's non-linear progression through the stages of his life gave me pause. I could see a bit of myself in his character, and it made me a little sad. Time, like a good novel, seems to pass far too quickly.
I'm looking forward to more of Atkinson's pennings; she has officially captured my interest.
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July 9, 2017На укрправді виклали шматочок "Руїн бога" Кейт Аткінсон у перекладі мене. Себто вже можна починати сватати цей текст усім навколишнім, хто не встиг утекти, ура! Я справді люблю цей текст, він шалений і значно більший усередині, ніж назовні.
В основі сюжету - доля британського льотчика, що, як виявиться вже після війни, бомбив цивільне німецьке населення. Як поєднати очевидний героїзм і жертовність Королівських повітряних сил із етичною спірністю виданих тоді наказів? Як йому з цим жити далі? І як стикується здрібніле буденне життя з надлишковістю воєнного досвіду?
А крім того: як жити, умовно кажучи, прадідів великих правнукам? Себто як жити тим, хто поза війною чи після війни - всім тим, чиє життя куплене жертвами інших? Аткінсон от - людина з повоєнного покоління - не пробачає одній своїй героїні, теж письменниці з повоєнного покоління (з підозріло схожою на Аткінсон траєкторією:)), її дріб'язковості й недолугості на фоні тих випробувань, які були в попереднього покоління.
Але при цьому - це не лише й навіть не стільки воєнна драма. Війна займає порівняно невелику кількість сторінок. Решту сторінок герої живуть, життя розповзається, як дріжджеве тісто, життя - форма засадничо недраматична, якщо йому пощастило не урватися на якийсь трагічний спосіб. Життя розгалуджується на завулочки бічних сюжетиків, які не ведуть нікуди, але з яких відкриваються прегарні краєвиди на все на світі, от їй-бо - і ось герої тримають у голові рядочки поезії як втіху про чорний день, а ось кумедні нео-погани 70х, а ось свіжонавернені буддисти 2000х, а ось квіти у луках.
А, й там просто прекрасний фінал. Перекладала - ридала (серед ночі у Старбаксі на Гарвардській площі, хто був - знає, а хто не був - повірте на слово: менш сприятливе емоціям місце годі й вигадати, це такий треш! - десь як МакДак на Хрещатику на наші гроші). Редагувала - ридала. Це прямо атракціон, скільки разів його намагалася переказати різним людям - щоразу на фразі "А потім книжки зникаааають з полиииииць" починаю істерично ридати. Карочє, хороший фінал. І книжка хороша, раджу брать:)
В основі сюжету - доля британського льотчика, що, як виявиться вже після війни, бомбив цивільне німецьке населення. Як поєднати очевидний героїзм і жертовність Королівських повітряних сил із етичною спірністю виданих тоді наказів? Як йому з цим жити далі? І як стикується здрібніле буденне життя з надлишковістю воєнного досвіду?
А крім того: як жити, умовно кажучи, прадідів великих правнукам? Себто як жити тим, хто поза війною чи після війни - всім тим, чиє життя куплене жертвами інших? Аткінсон от - людина з повоєнного покоління - не пробачає одній своїй героїні, теж письменниці з повоєнного покоління (з підозріло схожою на Аткінсон траєкторією:)), її дріб'язковості й недолугості на фоні тих випробувань, які були в попереднього покоління.
Але при цьому - це не лише й навіть не стільки воєнна драма. Війна займає порівняно невелику кількість сторінок. Решту сторінок герої живуть, життя розповзається, як дріжджеве тісто, життя - форма засадничо недраматична, якщо йому пощастило не урватися на якийсь трагічний спосіб. Життя розгалуджується на завулочки бічних сюжетиків, які не ведуть нікуди, але з яких відкриваються прегарні краєвиди на все на світі, от їй-бо - і ось герої тримають у голові рядочки поезії як втіху про чорний день, а ось кумедні нео-погани 70х, а ось свіжонавернені буддисти 2000х, а ось квіти у луках.
А, й там просто прекрасний фінал. Перекладала - ридала (серед ночі у Старбаксі на Гарвардській площі, хто був - знає, а хто не був - повірте на слово: менш сприятливе емоціям місце годі й вигадати, це такий треш! - десь як МакДак на Хрещатику на наші гроші). Редагувала - ридала. Це прямо атракціон, скільки разів його намагалася переказати різним людям - щоразу на фразі "А потім книжки зникаааають з полиииииць" починаю істерично ридати. Карочє, хороший фінал. І книжка хороша, раджу брать:)
June 13, 2017
“As you got older and time went on, you realized that the distinction between truth and fiction didn’t really matter because eventually everything disappeared into the soupy, amnesiac mess of history. Personal or political, it made no difference.”
4★
What if? Almost exactly a year ago, I enjoyed Ursula’s repeating “What if?” story in Atkinson’s Life After Life, (which I reviewed here https://www.goodreads.com/review/show... and I was looking forward to this about brother Teddy. But I was more than halfway through before I really got interested in Teddy and his family. What was the truth? Which character do I believe?
Of course, overshadowing everything is why do we not learn from the horrors of previous wars?
I trusted Atkinson’s eccentric storytelling, so I kept reading. She manages family dynamics so well, and I enjoy her off-beat humour that pops up unexpectedly.
“Sylvie removed her fur and put on her light evening duster for which only hard-working silkworms had been sacrificed.”
. . .
“When he came back outside, into the harsh daylight, the dog sniffed him suspiciously for signs of infidelity.
. . .
‘Surprise?’ she said when she eventually tracked him down. ‘It is,’ he said. They had hugged warily, as if one of them might have a knife.
. . .
“She had sent an email to her agent and asked her to tell people that she was having an operation (she was, she was having her mind removed) and to make her apologies all round.”
Viewpoints change. We hear from Teddy’s parents, Teddy, Nancy, Violet and others. Teddy grew up loving nature and picked flowers for his adoring, glamorous mother (Sylvie, of the fur and silk).
The British were hammered in both World Wars, and Teddy’s childhood was coloured by it. His father, Hugh, who “retired to his growlery again with a small glass of whisky and the stub of a half-smoked cigar”, once told a neighbour that
“Sylvie had no intention of discussing the war. It had been a rip in the fabric of their lives and she had sewn it up neatly. ‘Oh, that’s a very good way of putting it, Hugh,’ Mrs Shawcross – Roberta – said. ‘But, you know, unless you can do very good invisible stitching there’ll always be a scar, won’t there?’ He regretted introducing the needlework metaphors.”
I enjoyed the gradual peeling back of the layers of each character’s understanding of each other. I had decided too quickly what each person was like or was capable of. I still don’t like her, but I understand why Teddy’s and Nancy’s only child Viola appears to be a distasteful spoiled brat who rebels when she grows up and moves to a commune with a disreputable character and has two kids: Sun and Moon.
“He loved Viola as only a parent can love a child, but it was hard work.”
And I understand Teddy, who faced war so young and did his best to deal with it. But Nancy, at home, didn’t appreciate the price he paid.
“His aircraft had been coned and shot down by flak on the dreadful raid to Nuremberg. He hadn’t known it at the time but it was the worst night of the war for Bomber Command – ninety-six aircraft lost, five hundred and forty-five men killed, more than in the whole Battle of Britain. But by the time he made it home this was all old, cold news, Nuremberg all but forgotten. ‘You were very brave,’ Nancy said, with the same encouraging indifference – to Teddy’s ears anyway – that she might have afforded him if he had done well in a maths test.
And I admire Atkinson, who can write a companion piece to Life After Life which offers us the WHAT IFS? that make us think. I hope I’m not doing her a disservice by quoting from the end of the book, just to remind us, lest we forget:
“Fifty-five thousand, five hundred and seventy-three dead from Bomber Command. Seven million German dead, including the five hundred thousand killed by the Allied bombing campaign. The sixty million dead overall of the Second World War, including eleven million murdered in the Holocaust. The sixteen million of the First World War, over four million in Vietnam, forty million to the Mongol conquests, three and a half million to the Hundred Years War, the fall of Rome took seven million, the Napoleonic Wars took four million, twenty million to the Taiping Rebellion. And so on and so on and so on, all the way back to the Garden when Cain killed Abel.”
The only reason it isn't 5 stars from me is because it took me so long to get it, if I can put it that way.
4★
What if? Almost exactly a year ago, I enjoyed Ursula’s repeating “What if?” story in Atkinson’s Life After Life, (which I reviewed here https://www.goodreads.com/review/show... and I was looking forward to this about brother Teddy. But I was more than halfway through before I really got interested in Teddy and his family. What was the truth? Which character do I believe?
Of course, overshadowing everything is why do we not learn from the horrors of previous wars?
I trusted Atkinson’s eccentric storytelling, so I kept reading. She manages family dynamics so well, and I enjoy her off-beat humour that pops up unexpectedly.
“Sylvie removed her fur and put on her light evening duster for which only hard-working silkworms had been sacrificed.”
. . .
“When he came back outside, into the harsh daylight, the dog sniffed him suspiciously for signs of infidelity.
. . .
‘Surprise?’ she said when she eventually tracked him down. ‘It is,’ he said. They had hugged warily, as if one of them might have a knife.
. . .
“She had sent an email to her agent and asked her to tell people that she was having an operation (she was, she was having her mind removed) and to make her apologies all round.”
Viewpoints change. We hear from Teddy’s parents, Teddy, Nancy, Violet and others. Teddy grew up loving nature and picked flowers for his adoring, glamorous mother (Sylvie, of the fur and silk).
The British were hammered in both World Wars, and Teddy’s childhood was coloured by it. His father, Hugh, who “retired to his growlery again with a small glass of whisky and the stub of a half-smoked cigar”, once told a neighbour that
“Sylvie had no intention of discussing the war. It had been a rip in the fabric of their lives and she had sewn it up neatly. ‘Oh, that’s a very good way of putting it, Hugh,’ Mrs Shawcross – Roberta – said. ‘But, you know, unless you can do very good invisible stitching there’ll always be a scar, won’t there?’ He regretted introducing the needlework metaphors.”
I enjoyed the gradual peeling back of the layers of each character’s understanding of each other. I had decided too quickly what each person was like or was capable of. I still don’t like her, but I understand why Teddy’s and Nancy’s only child Viola appears to be a distasteful spoiled brat who rebels when she grows up and moves to a commune with a disreputable character and has two kids: Sun and Moon.
“He loved Viola as only a parent can love a child, but it was hard work.”
And I understand Teddy, who faced war so young and did his best to deal with it. But Nancy, at home, didn’t appreciate the price he paid.
“His aircraft had been coned and shot down by flak on the dreadful raid to Nuremberg. He hadn’t known it at the time but it was the worst night of the war for Bomber Command – ninety-six aircraft lost, five hundred and forty-five men killed, more than in the whole Battle of Britain. But by the time he made it home this was all old, cold news, Nuremberg all but forgotten. ‘You were very brave,’ Nancy said, with the same encouraging indifference – to Teddy’s ears anyway – that she might have afforded him if he had done well in a maths test.
And I admire Atkinson, who can write a companion piece to Life After Life which offers us the WHAT IFS? that make us think. I hope I’m not doing her a disservice by quoting from the end of the book, just to remind us, lest we forget:
“Fifty-five thousand, five hundred and seventy-three dead from Bomber Command. Seven million German dead, including the five hundred thousand killed by the Allied bombing campaign. The sixty million dead overall of the Second World War, including eleven million murdered in the Holocaust. The sixteen million of the First World War, over four million in Vietnam, forty million to the Mongol conquests, three and a half million to the Hundred Years War, the fall of Rome took seven million, the Napoleonic Wars took four million, twenty million to the Taiping Rebellion. And so on and so on and so on, all the way back to the Garden when Cain killed Abel.”
The only reason it isn't 5 stars from me is because it took me so long to get it, if I can put it that way.
August 28, 2017
Gobsmacked and in tears at the end. Full review to follow. A worthy sequel to Life After Life, and I'd argue made the better if you read them in order, but also a thing of Beauty and Art (nods to Sylvie) on its own.
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