324:. She might have been able to use his memories as the basis of a novel. One that everyone would respect. People always took war novels seriously."(p. 370) In her review of the novel, Maureen Corrigan observed that 2015 was the 70th anniversary of V.E. Day and said, "Kate Atkinson's magnificent new novel, "A God In Ruins," both mourns the passing of the World War II generation and offers the consolation of fiction as a way to vicariously enter into the experience of the war."
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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 had a granddaughter who loved him, a consolation even after Viola packed him off to sheltered housing in his old age.
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filled with bunnies and skylarks and bluebells, glimmering hot air and long gossamer evenings. 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) - which the child himself greatly disliked.
344:, though it shares the same composition, flitting back and forth in time ... allowing Atkinson to reveal her characters in glimpses over the course of the novel while withholding vital information that creates mysteries at the heart of the story." Ultimately, in what critic James Walton called, "one of the most devastating twists in recent fiction," the novel ends with Teddy dying in the war, reversing events and erasing characters.
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The novel was widely praised in reviews, described as: "fiction at its best," "a dazzling read," "bold, playful and engrossing," "tender, moving, caustic, and at times, brilliantly funny," and "a grown-up, elegant fairy tale, at least of a kind, with a humane vision of people in all their complicated
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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
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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
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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
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Following the text of the novel, in an "Author's Note," Atkinson stated, "The bottom line is that it's fiction. Personally, I think all novels are not only fiction they are about fiction too." (p. 457) "And, of course," she added, "there is a great conceit hidden at the heart of the book to do
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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
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is overshadowed by Teddy's death in aerial battle over
Germany. Deeply grieving for her lost lover, Nancy tells Teddy's sister Ursula: "He would never get married and have children, never live the wonderful life he deserved". But at the very end of the book, Teddy miraculously comes back from the
468:, the life of the risen Teddy turned out to be far from satisfactory. His marriage was cut tragically short by Nancy's brain tumor, his fatherhood fatally blighted by the unrelenting hatred of his only child Viola, and his old age marked by humiliating degeneration and degradation at an inhuman "
480:. And thus, this book ends with Nancy and Ursula once again deeply grieving for the dead Teddy. Nancy cannot ever know that, in renouncing his post-war life, Teddy had also created a future in which she would be saved from the brain tumor – though it would be at the side of another man."
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In midlife, Viola developed a successful career as a popular novelist (although it is noted that not even success made her happy). Having tuned out her father and everything he said for decades ... "She wished she had asked him about his war when he was still
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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
409:(4.0 out of 5) based on critic reviews with a critical summary saying, "Atkinson's latest novel is "a sprawling, unapologetically ambitious saga that tells the story of postwar Britain through the microcosm of a single family" (New York Times Book review)".
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splendor." Book critic
Maureen Corrigan said, "In "A God In Ruins," Atkinson has written a novel that takes its place in the line of powerful works about young men and war, stretching from Stephen Crane's "Red Badge Of Courage" to Kevin Powers' "
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The book begins with three epigraphs, the first of which refers to the title: "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,
424:, reviewer Carolyn Kellogg said, "sadly, the new book doesn't live up to the promise of its predecessor," citing the effects of unappealing characters, the disappointments of post-war Britain and Teddy's losses in old age. In
183:. Atkinson calls it the "companion piece" rather than a sequel to the earlier novel. The first book spans half a century, including World War II; the second is set entirely within it. It won the
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foretold that her son's fate was either to gain glory and die young, or to live a long but uneventful life in obscurity. Achilles chose the former, and decided to take part in the Trojan war -
472:". Given at the last moment a chance to go back and change the way his life had gone, Teddy chooses to die as a young, self-sacrificing war hero - a bit reminiscent of the choice made by
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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.
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Barbara C. Wheatley, "Death and
Resurrection and Death Again - Atkinson's Amazing Todd Family" in Margaret Kellog (ed.) "Round Up of New Easseys in Literary Research"
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Jul/Aug 2015 issue, a magazine that aggregates critic reviews of books, the book received a
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440:, which is saying a lot–everything–it's not as much fun."
315:"I know that," Teddy said. "But please stop reading now."
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572:. New York, NY: Little, Brown and Company.
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