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A God In Ruins
Dec. 10th, 2019 10:18 amA God In Ruins is a kind of companion novel to the other of Kate Atkinson's books I read this year, Life After Life. It involves a lot of the same characters and versions of some of the same events, but focuses on Teddy, a WW2 bomber pilot and nature writer, rather than Ursula.
In Life After Life, Ursula lives her life over and over again, but each one is told in a linear fashion before it cycles back round to her birth. In A God In Ruins, Teddy only lives one life but it is totally fractured and told in a completely non-linear way.
I think I would have been confused by some of the inter-relationships and some of the timeline if I hadn't already read Life After Life, but being familiar with the characters made it interesting to see different perspectives and which aspects the author had selected to look at from the range available from the other book.
But it's *so* fragmented that it was a bit difficult to follow at times. I have no idea how you put such an ambitious structure together, so it's very impressive, though it doesn't always work completely. There are times when little details or thoughts are revealed as if for the first time on multiple occasions, which makes it feel repetitive in places. And there are also moments when characters or events are referenced before they are fully introduced, which is confusing. And I think some of the narrative tension is lost when you already know how things turn out in the end.
There are some interesting self-referential aspects along the way. At one point, Teddy thinks there'd be no point in writing a novel about his life because nothing much has happened to him, which is an odd thing for a protagonist in a novel to consider. It's also a bit weird that by far the least likeable of the characters becomes a successful novelist in later life - and thinks about writing a war novel because "people always take a war novel seriously".
But, overall, the story kept me engaged throughout, I liked a lot of the characters and there were some truly heartbreaking moments (along with some really horrific ones) that added a lot of emotional depth. I particularly liked Bertie's asides - little responses in brackets that provided a biting commentary on the other characters and gave the sense of a dialogue taking place off-page. I liked Life After Life more, but it was good to spend more time with these characters.
In Life After Life, Ursula lives her life over and over again, but each one is told in a linear fashion before it cycles back round to her birth. In A God In Ruins, Teddy only lives one life but it is totally fractured and told in a completely non-linear way.
I think I would have been confused by some of the inter-relationships and some of the timeline if I hadn't already read Life After Life, but being familiar with the characters made it interesting to see different perspectives and which aspects the author had selected to look at from the range available from the other book.
But it's *so* fragmented that it was a bit difficult to follow at times. I have no idea how you put such an ambitious structure together, so it's very impressive, though it doesn't always work completely. There are times when little details or thoughts are revealed as if for the first time on multiple occasions, which makes it feel repetitive in places. And there are also moments when characters or events are referenced before they are fully introduced, which is confusing. And I think some of the narrative tension is lost when you already know how things turn out in the end.
There are some interesting self-referential aspects along the way. At one point, Teddy thinks there'd be no point in writing a novel about his life because nothing much has happened to him, which is an odd thing for a protagonist in a novel to consider. It's also a bit weird that by far the least likeable of the characters becomes a successful novelist in later life - and thinks about writing a war novel because "people always take a war novel seriously".
But, overall, the story kept me engaged throughout, I liked a lot of the characters and there were some truly heartbreaking moments (along with some really horrific ones) that added a lot of emotional depth. I particularly liked Bertie's asides - little responses in brackets that provided a biting commentary on the other characters and gave the sense of a dialogue taking place off-page. I liked Life After Life more, but it was good to spend more time with these characters.
