Stephanie Jones: Book Review - A God In Ruins by Kate Atkinson

What are the markers of a life well-lived? And how does one find equilibrium, let alone enjoyment, in a span of decades that were discounted in the cockpit of a crippled bomber somewhere over Germany? These questions dominate in Kate Atkinson’s A God in Ruins, the companion novel to her award-winning Life After Life, whose heroine, Ursula Todd, was afforded countless new beginnings as she navigated the treacherous mid-years of the 20th century.

World War II is likewise at the heart of this story, which has Ursula’s brother Teddy as its protagonist. As in her earlier novel, Atkinson is initially preoccupied by the dynamic of the seven-strong Todd family, led by mild-mannered Hugh and steely Sylvie, who schools her offspring in the importance of good manners, stoicism, and letting barbaric thoughts go unvoiced.

When Teddy learns of Utopia, he realizes that his short life has lined up with that ideal. It doesn’t hurt that he is the darling of the otherwise remote Sylvie – “Only one child held her heart in his rather grubby fist” – or that his siblings don’t seem to hold it against him.

That is as it should be, for Teddy never abuses his good fortune. Indeed, whether going on to a life after war when you had never countenanced an ‘afterward’ is good luck or a life sentence is a matter of opinion. By the numbers, it is exceptional that he survives; only 10 percent of aircrew flying at the beginning of the war would see the end of it. Teddy’s uneasy transition from triumphant Halifax skipper to anonymous husband and father is the novel’s most poignant aspect.

Every stage of Teddy’s life, juxtaposed as it is with those of his chronically self-absorbed daughter Viola, grandchildren Sunny and Bertie, and wife Nancy, is in some way emotionally provocative. Parts of his story illuminate the trade-offs made by men and women in hard-won peacetime. Teddy is unsettled, equivocal, resistant to domesticity despite having promised himself that if he survived the war he would go home, marry his childhood sweetheart and be grateful for an uneventful life. Nancy has made compromises of her own. In an era thick with recent or impending loss, nostalgia is a cheap emotion and wishful thinking an indulgence.

As in Life After Life, and with shades of Ian McEwan’s Atonement, Atkinson employs fictive licence to full effect. Everywhere there is invention. A source of dismay to Teddy is his Aunt Izzie’s creation, Augustus, a fictionalized Teddy who is constantly facing the consequences of his misbehaviour. Viola, in mid-life, becomes a celebrated novelist.

From Teddy’s perspective, Ursula’s life ends prematurely, but we know Atkinson has no trouble with redirection, and she issues a reminder that the power always lies in the hands – and mind – of the author. Though many of the novel’s events are historical, the characters are imagined, and the blend is exquisite. As Viola reflects, “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.”

Each member of the Todd clan has their own notion of what ‘Art’ should be. The purest definition – something created by one person that brings joy to another – sums up A God in Ruins, a spellbinding blend of truth and fiction that pivots on a single imperfect and fascinating life.