Summer Reading, Angela Gerst: A God In Ruins (2015)
From the NPR book review:
The moment in Kate Atkinson’s A God In Ruinswhen protagonist Teddy Todd lies to his granddaughter about an old photograph isn’t a grand climax. It happens in passing, in half a sentence: She asks about the stain on an image of Teddy and his long-dead wife Nancy. It’s actually the blood of one of his World War II air crew, who died in his arms after their plane was shot down. But Teddy claims it’s tea, “not because she wouldn’t have been interested but because it was a private thing.”
It’s only a tiny coda to the vivid story of the plane crash and the gunner’s death, but the exchange still feels central to A God In Ruins. Atkinson’s companion novel to her 2013 best-seller, Life After Life, brings back familiar characters and invents many new ones, but to different ends. Life After Lifeexplored human potential through a sophisticated version of a Choose Your Own Adventure story, with protagonist Ursula Todd dying over and over, then continuing through iterations of lives where she made different choices or had better luck.
A God In Ruins isn’t about the freedom of options, but about self-imposed barriers. Ursula’s brother Teddy, who died in the war in her story, gets his own chance to live an alternate life in this novel. But his stoic, British inability to open up to people shuts down many of his potential paths….
