A God in Ruins
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3.9 • 20 Ratings
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- $9.99
Publisher Description
The stunning companion to Kate Atkinson's #1 bestseller Life After Life, "one of the best novels I've read this century" (Gillian Flynn, author of Gone Girl).
Kate Atkinson's dazzling Life After Life explored the possibility of infinite chances, following Ursula Todd as she lived through the turbulent events of the last century again and again. Her new novel tells the story of Ursula Todd'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 is facing the difficulties of living in a future he never expected to have. The stunning companion to Life After Life, A God in Ruins explores the loss of innocence, the fraught transition from the war to peace time, and the pain of being misunderstood, especially as we age. Proving once again that Kate Atkinson is "one of the finest writers working today" (The Chicago Tribune), A God in Ruins is the triumphant return of a modern master.
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
Billed as a “companion novel” to her global bestseller Life After Life, A God in Ruins is one of the most beautiful and unforgettable books we’ve read in a long time. Kate Atkinson is an astonishing writer who paints each scene in saturated colour and microscopic detail. Standing in the centre of her remarkable tale is Teddy, a nature-loving boy turned Royal Air Force pilot turned family man. Hopscotching between different eras in Teddy’s life, Atkinson pierces our hearts with scenes of ordinary family life—rich with clumsy affection and little disappointments—and extraordinary accounts of 20th-century history.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
The life expectancy of RAF pilots in World War II was notoriously short, with fewer than half surviving the war. But Teddy Todd the beloved younger brother of Ursula Todd, whose life in all its variations was the subject of Atkinson s Life After Life beats the odds. Inner peace means resuming a life he never expected to have in a now-diminished England. He has nightmares; a wife he loves, although not necessarily enough or in the right way; and, eventually, a daughter who blames him for her mother s early death and never misses a chance to mention the blood on his hands. As much postwar story as war story, the book is also a depiction of the way past and present mix. Atkinson fans know that she can bend time to her will, and here she effortlessly shifts between Teddy s flying days and his middle and old age, between his grandchildren and their awful mother, and back again. And, as in Life After Life, Atkinson isn t just telling a story: she s deconstructing, taking apart the notion of how we believe stories are told. Using narrative tricks that range from the subtlest sleight of hand to direct address, she makes us feel the power of storytelling not as an intellectual conceit, but as a punch in the gut.
