A God in Ruins: A Novel
Kate Atkinson
Language: English
Pages: 480
ISBN: 0316176508
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
One of the Best Books of 2015--TIME, NPR, Washington Post, The Chicago Tribune, The Christian Science Monitor, The Seattle Times, The Kansas City Star, Kirkus, Bookpage, Hudson Booksellers, AARP
The stunning companion to Kate Atkinson's #1 bestseller Life After Life, "one of the best novels I've read this century" (Gillian Flynn).
"He had been reconciled to death during the war and then suddenly the war was over and there was a next day and a next day. Part of him never adjusted to having a future."
Kate Atkinson's dazzling Life After Life explored the possibility of infinite chances and the power of choices, following Ursula Todd as she lived through the turbulent events of the last century over and over again.
A GOD IN RUINS tells the dramatic story of the 20th Century through Ursula's beloved younger brother Teddy--would-be poet, heroic pilot, husband, father, and grandfather-as he navigates the perils and progress of a rapidly changing world. After all that Teddy endures in battle, his greatest challenge is living in a future he never expected to have.
An ingenious and moving exploration of one ordinary man's path through extraordinary times, A GOD IN RUINS proves once again that Kate Atkinson is one of the finest novelists of our age.
Roses from the Earth: The Biography of Anne Frank
Solar Dance: Genius, Forgery, and the Crisis of Truth in the Modern Age
At Leningrad's Gates: The Combat Memoirs of a Soldier with Army Group North
The Gothic Line: Canada's Month of Hell in World War II Italy
Last year hors de combat in a POW camp near the Polish border. He had parachuted out of a burning aircraft over Germany and had been unable to evade capture because of a broken ankle. His aircraft had been coned and shot down by flak on the dreadful raid to Nuremberg. He hadn’t known it at the time but it was the worst night of the war for Bomber Command—ninety-six aircraft lost, five hundred and forty-five men killed, more than in the whole Battle of Britain. But by the time he made it home this.
You’ve become,” Sylvie said. “Hardly.” “And what do the facts say?” Izzie asked, and Ursula, who knew a girl in the Air Ministry, didn’t say that Teddy’s chances of surviving his first operational sortie were, at best, slim, and that his chances of surviving his first tour were almost non-existent, but instead said brightly, “That it’s a just war.” “Oh, good,” Izzie said, “one would so hate to be fighting an unjust one. You will be on the side of the angels, darling boy.” “Angels are British.
Prim. She was greeted by an enormous bunch of bluebells. “Oh, bluebells, how lovely,” she said to Teddy. Her boy. She had two others but sometimes they hardly seemed to count. Her daughters weren’t necessarily objects of affection, more like problems to be solved. Only one child held her heart in his rather grubby fist. “Do wash before tea, dear,” she said to Teddy. “What on earth have you been doing all this time?” “Getting to know each other,” Izzie said. “Such a darling boy. I say, aren’t.
Were more likely to be killed on a raid over Germany (“Four times more likely,” according to Ursula’s girl at the Air Ministry), but you were still risking your life. It was rather iniquitous, Teddy thought. Or, in the more straightforward language of his bomb-aimer, “Bloody unfair.” Keith was the first person that Teddy crewed up with at the OTU. Crewing up was an unexpected affair that had taken them largely by surprise. All the components—pilots, navigators, wireless operators, bomb-aimers.
Seven-year-old, but on the other hand his legs and feet couldn’t take much more. The tracks were embedded in wood where they crossed over the tarmac and his father patted the wood next to him and said, “Relax, have a seat.” He lit his roll-up and discovered a flattened bag of completely melted chocolate buttons in his back pocket and looked at them in astonishment. “Wow,” he said. “Purple.” Sunny sat, less reluctant now that he’d seen the chocolate, and the wooden part of the road wasn’t too.