A God In Ruins by Kate Atkinson

 

Teddy Todd seems to live his life through the expectations of others.  As a child, he had an idyllic life in the countryside, loved by his family.  He adored his big sister, Ursula, and his father.  His best friends were the girls on the neighboring estate, especially Nancy, who was his age.  But even as a child, Teddy did what others wanted of him.  His childhood was immortalized by his aunt who wrote a set of famous childhood novels about a figure who was Teddy in disguise and who was loved by a generation.  As he got to adulthood, whatever he wanted to do with his life was overwritten by the War.  As with most of his generation, Teddy enlisted and his job was to become a fighter pilot.

He was an excellent one.  The casualty rate was horrendous but somehow Teddy managed to get his crew home alive and safe even on those few occasions when he had to crash land.  He was revered by his crew but never expected to end the war alive as the majority of his kind did not.  He didn't really plan for life after the war as he didn't believe there would be one.

But Teddy did survive and now had to find what else life had in store for him.  He tried various things, teaching, writing, working on a newspaper.  He gardened.  His marriage to Nancy was solid but Teddy wondered if it was really a grand love affair or just a comfortable way of being.  He and Nancy had one daughter, Viola.  Viola was her mother's daughter and after Nancy died early, Teddy and Viola went along but were never that close.  Teddy becomes much closer to Viola's children who spent much of their childhood with him.

This novel is a companion piece to an earlier Atkinson work, Life After Life, which was the story of Ursula's life.  Atkinson is able through the exploration of the Todd family to demonstrate what was the reality for the majority of an English generation, barely surviving the first world war only to be plunged into another twenty years later.  This modern war which also saw the Blitz of London, affected every English family and also shook up the traditions as people from many countries came to fight and the old class system started to fall apart as men worked and fought alongside each other and women fell in love with those who managed to survive.  Teddy is a hero for the times and an example of a man who did what was expected of him, by his government, by his family and by society.  This book is recommended for readers of literary fiction.