A God in Ruins (novel)

A God in Ruins

First U.S. edition, 2015
Author	Kate Atkinson
Cover artist	Keith Hayes
Country	United States
Language	English
Genre	Historical fiction
Published	2015 (Little, Brown and Company)
Media type	Print (hardcover, paperback)
Pages	468 (1st edition)
ISBN
OCLC	903052583
LC Class	PR6051.T56 G64 2015
Preceded by	Life After Life (novel)

A God in Ruins the ninth novel by Kate Atkinson was published in 2015. The main character, Teddy Todd is the younger brother of Ursula Todd, the protagonist in Atkinson's 2013 novel, Life After Life. Atkinson calls it the "companion piece" rather than a sequel to the earlier novel. Both books are about World War II. It won the Costa Book Award for Novel in 2015.

The novel is about the life of Teddy Todd (younger brother of Ursula Todd, the protagonist of the companion work, Life After Life). Events in his life are not revealed in chronological order. The book opens with a brief glimpse of him as a bomber pilot in World War II, then goes on to events in his childhood and the lives of his child and grandchildren, at times juxtaposing his memories with events in the lives of his family members. Teddy's memories of his own childhood in Fox Corner, the Todd family's country home, seemed all summers filled with bunnies and skylarks and bluebells, glimmering hot air and long gossamer evenings. Ironically, the one difficulty in Teddy's young life was that when his Aunt Izzie came to visit she probed him with questions in order to supply her with details for the series of popular children's books she wrote about a boy named Augustus, set in a thinly disguised version of Teddy's idyllic home.(p. 3-9)

As an RAF bomber pilot Teddy knew the odds, so early on he had prepared himself for death. Yet, improbably, flight after flight he returned. "Teddy realized that 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." (p. 229) Completing one tour of duty, he would sign up for another. Hoping to share his luck, men vied for a place on his crew.

After the war, Teddy married Nancy, the woman who had been his childhood sweetheart, and they had a child, Viola. Nancy died of brain cancer when Viola was still young. Although Nancy had intended to end her life while she was still able, she did not. Instead, she insisted Teddy help her to die in a dramatic scene that Viola never told Teddy she had witnessed. Dutiful father, he gave up his poetry and rambling nature walks, moved into a suburban cottage, taught school and raised his only child, who never recovered from the loss of her mother, and always hated him. Years later, he had looked after Viola's children, too, and was blessed with a granddaughter who loved him, a consolation even after Viola packed him off to sheltered housing in his old age.

At the end of the book, and the end of Teddy's long life, when he had become too frail to do anything but remember, he recalled the flight that ended his RAF career. He remembered handing his parachute to the bomb-aimer and urging him to jump, and he himself went down with the plane, as he had always expected he would. Briefly, Atkinson then tied up loose ends: three members of Ted's crew parachuted successfully, survived in a German POW camp and returned to England after the war; but there was no Viola, no grandchildren; Ursula grieved, as did Nancy; on V.E. Day, Teddy's mother overdosed on sleeping pills.