48. A God in Ruins
Rating: ☆☆☆☆
Recommended by:
Author: Kate Atkinson
Genre: Fiction, Historical Fiction
468 pages, published May 1, 2015
Reading Format: Audio Book
Summary
A God in Ruins is a companion book to Life After Life, Kate Atkinson’s absorbing family drama which used the artifice of creating multiple lives for protagonist Ursula Todd set against the back drop of England during the first and second World Wars. A God in Ruins dispenses with the multiple lives convention and shifts the focus to Teddy Todd, Ursula’s beloved younger brother. At a very young age, Teddy becomes an RAF bomber pilot in World War II, is reported missing, presumed dead, but reappears at the end of the war having spent two years as a POW in Germany. This is the story of Teddy’s war and his life after coming home, from his time as a young husband and father to his days as an elderly grandfather. Teddy is particularly challenged by his unappreciative and angry daughter Viola who supplies much of the humor in the book.
Quotes
“Was I really such a terrible mother?’ she asked Bertie. ‘Why the past tense?’ Bertie said.”
“She had never been without a book for as long as she could remember. An only child never is.”
“The whole edifice of civilization turned out to be constructed from an unstable mix of quicksand and imagination.”
“Moments left, Teddy thought. A handful of heartbeats. That was what life was. A heartbeat followed by a heartbeat. A breath followed by a breath. One moment followed by another moment and then there was a last moment.”
“The purpose of Art,” his mother, Sylvie, said—instructed even—“is to convey the truth of a thing, not to be the truth itself.”
“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.”
“He was a baby once, she thought. New and perfect, cradled in his mother’s arms. The mysterious Sylvie. Now he was a feathery husk, ready to blow away. His eyes were half open, milky, like an old dog, and his mouth had grown beaky with the extremity of age, opening and closing, a fish out of water. Bertie could feel a continual tremor running through him, an electrical current, the faint buzz of life. Or death, perhaps. Energy was gathering around him, the air was static with it.”
“What a good husband you are”, Nancy said afterward, “always taking your wife’s side rather than your mother’s.” “It’s the side of reason I am on”, Teddy said, “It just so happens that that’s where you’re always to be found and my mother rarely.”
“He didn’t make plans himself any more. There was now and it was followed by another now. If you were lucky.”
“Secrets had the power to kill a marriage, she said. Nonsense, Sylvie said, it was secrets that could save a marriage.”
“Best always to praise rather than criticize.”
“If he hadn’t been the father of her children, Viola might have admired Dominic for the way he was so easily able to absolve himself of all obligation simply by asserting his right to self-fulfillment.”
“The “eat” part was easy. The praying and loving were harder.”
“The more Viola forgot her mother, the more she missed her.”
My Take
I really enjoyed listening to the Audio Book version of A God in Ruins, a beautifully written book that is both entertaining and profound. It has a lot to say about life, death, sacrifice, marriage, parents and children and does it through the sweet, honorable and troubled character of Teddy. A God in Ruins also does a great job of capturing British life during the middle of the Twentieth Century. Highly recommended.
