Life After Life and A God in Ruins, Kate Atkinson
Fast Facts
- Kate Atkinson is a gorgeous writer. I read Life After Life so voraciously and loved it so much that I bought A God in Ruins, its "companion novel", immediately.
- Life After Life: 560 pages
- A God in Ruins: 480 pages
- And it turns out that 1,040 pages to spend with Ursula and Teddy Todd are not nearly enough
- Life After Life chronicles many iterations of the life of Ursula Todd, as the conceit of the novel is that Ursula is born in the British countryside in 1910, and then dies, and is born again.
- A God in Ruins follows the singular life of Ursula's younger brother Teddy, a fighter pilot war hero, and his family, in a series of chronological jumps with Teddy's war at their center.
- For anyone who loves brilliantly written fiction that manages to be beautiful and literary without being intimidating, with creative storytelling and vibrant characters who end up feeling like family members you can't bear to part with by the end, then you will find a new favorite author in Kate Atkinson.
Life After Life
You can care deeply about a person, and her family, and her story, even if you know that nothing matters and anyone in that story can die or have something horrible happen to them or can live and have something wonderful happen to them at any moment. Whether Ursula jumps out a window or is drowned on a day at the beach or tries to prevent the nanny from going to a celebration where she'll catch the deadly measles by throwing her down the stairs, there is a magical reset button on her life.
The first thing our immortal hero Ursula does when the book begins? Well, what anyone with a seemingly unlimited number of lives would do, of course. She walks into a German cafe and shoots Hitler while he's eating a plum streusel. Following Ursula through her childhood at her family estate, and her relationships with her siblings, and her love life and challenges and experiences throughout Europe and throughout World War II, is a fascinating adventure.
People who love novels (or great television, for that matter), will willingly suspend their disbelief and immerse themselves in a world and in people that are not real for the sake of entertainment. The characters don't frequently yell out to the audience: "Hey! None of this is real, and none of this matters!"
Kate Atkinson, on the other hand, constantly reminds you that none of the actions in Ursula's world have lasting consequences, and even though this is a truth of any fictitious universe, she proves that awareness that "none of this is real" doesn't necessarily detract from a book's merits or its joys. Perhaps there's no greater existential meaning to this authorial choice, but that didn't matter to me - I loved the book.
A God in Ruins
Finishing Life After Life, I did wonder whether I would still be curious about other elements of the Todd family members' lives. Certain phrases and characteristics of Ursula's mother Sylvie, father Hugh, sister Pamela, brother Maurice, and Aunt Izzie, for example, were repeated so often that they could feel caricature-like at times. But Atkinson wasn't nearly finished with sharing her vision for these family members, and Teddy Todd in particular.
A God in Ruins follows a more traditional format in the sense that Teddy doesn't die every several pages. Sometimes the point of view would switch to Teddy's horrible daughter Violet, to his grandchildren, and for fleeting moments (treasures, to readers of Life After Life) to Teddy's parents or aunt.
Mainly, though, the story follows Teddy, jumping from Teddy as a youth to Teddy as a young married man to Teddy at a nursing home to Teddy's turning point as a World War II pilot. The book revolves around Teddy and watching his growth and development at various stages feels so fulfilling in Atkinson's skilled hands. Time was passing and I hardly realized it as I was reading - ironic given the important role time plays as a theme throughout both novels.
Buy These For Yourself for the Holidays, Please
If I wasn't so absorbed in Elena Ferrante's Neapolitan Quartet (which took me a little while to get into, but ultimately is irresistible) - I would buy the rest of Kate Atkinson's books and binge them immediately, and then I'd likely be upset that there weren't any more. She is a treasure, and these books are wonderful - buy them for yourself or someone you love!
