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Welcome

I started this blog in 2013 to share my reflections on reading, writing and psychology, along with my journey to become a published novelist.​  I soon graduated to about twenty book reviews a month and a weekly 99-word story. Ten years later, I've transferred my writing / publication updates to my new website but will continue here with occasional reviews and flash fiction pieces, and maybe the odd personal post.

ANNE GOODWIN'S WRITING NEWS

The soupy amnesiac mess of history: A God in Ruins by Kate Atkinson

7/5/2015

10 Comments

 
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It’s 1925 and one can’t help wondering (worrying) how such a sweet ten-year-old as Teddy, entranced more by nature than the prospect of wielding a catapult, will cope with boarding school, let alone the war that neither he, nor the adults around him, could possibly foresee. Yet I didn’t feel totally engaged with him and his family until introduced to his dreadful daughter, Viola, with her half-baked hippy ideals (that are as much an opportunity to spout one of the longest words in the English language – anti-establishmentarianism – as to challenge her father). But since this is a novel in which time is not linear, but moves back and forth across the years, I didn’t have too long to wait.

Delightful as Viola’s character is, her shallow idealism is hardly original (see my review of Love and Fallout for another young woman who embraces a cause as a means of forging her own identity), but Kate Atkinson is too proficient a writer to leave it at that. Viola has much more in common with the pre-war version of her father than she realises (when he roamed through Europe working on the land), and a stronger rationale for her angry sense of victimhood than the reader appreciates, until approaching the end.

Covering the almost one-hundred years of Teddy’s life, A God in Ruins is a powerful novel about morality and how it is compromised, especially in time of war. Gentle Teddy becomes one of Bomber Command’s most successful fighter pilots, contributing to the destruction of Hamburg portrayed so movingly (from the other side) in The Aftermath. He vows that if he survives – and we are reminded that the majority didn’t – he’ll live the rest of his life in kindness. His daughter would dispute this, seeing only the pettiness in, for example, his refusal to buy products made in factories that had previously fed the Nazi war machine, but he proves a potentially life-saving attachment-figure for her two children, Sun and Moon (also known as Sunny and Bertie).

As with the debut novel The Mountain Can Wait, published on the same day, this is about the difficulty of communicating feelings, especially across the generations and even more so when the older generation values buttoned-up stoicism (as, for example, in Everything I Never Told You) while the younger believes in “letting it all hang out”. Teddy’s medals for bravery are all but forgotten in his move into supported housing for the elderly. Yet even during the war, on leave from the airbase, Nancy, the woman who will be his wife, doesn’t want to hear about the mechanics of bombing. But Teddy’s generation isn’t the only one whose heroics are neglected; his Aunt Izzie is perceived by the entire family as flighty and irresponsible, yet she too was recognised for her service, in her case in a field hospital not far from the mud of the trenches in what they then called the Great War.

In an early chapter, Aunt Izzie questions the young Teddy in a manner that writers will recognise: she’s writing a book based on the adventures of a young boy (that could be taken as Kate Atkinson’s homage to Richmal Crompton). As with Margaret Atwood’s, The Blind Assassin, excerpts from this book show the characters in a different light, especially at the end of the novel. But Izzie is not the only writer; Viola also finds success – if not happiness, nor her father’s approval – by fictionalising her life. And it’s not only the published novelists who play God in this manner: the airmen write upbeat letters to be sent to their families should they fail to return from a mission. Yet it’s in a lie she tells her therapist that Viola points to another theme of the novel (p312):

because that sounded infinitely more interesting than the cold, damp truth of mutual indifference. As you got older and time went on, you realised that the distinction between truth and fiction didn’t really matter because eventually everything disappeared into the soupy, amnesiac mess of history. Personal or political, it made no difference.

I’ve enjoyed Kate Atkinson’s writing since her debut Behind the Scenes at the Museum (although I missed her most recent, the Costa winning Life after Life to which A God in Ruins is a companion), but this is definitely her best. A triumph of storytelling, pondering life’s deep questions through engaging characters and page-turning prose; thanks to Doubleday for my advance proof copy.

This is the fourth of my reviews of six novels published today (7th May). If you missed The Green Road, The Mountain Can Wait or Jimfish, you can find them here.

Thanks for reading. I'd love to know what you think. If you've enjoyed this post, you might like to sign up via the sidebar for regular email updates and/or my quarterly Newsletter.
10 Comments
Norah Colvin link
7/5/2015 06:31:58 am

Interesting that the generations, who fail to see the similarities and connections, wage the same wars just against different foes and situations. Each is heroic in their own time and eyes, but fade into obscurity as they age. It's not really what you have said, but the feeling I took, mostly from the last quote; almost the insignificance of life in its mundane repetitiveness and the need for fictionalization to inspire. Or maybe that's my 'flat week' interpretation? It does sound like an interesting read. Thanks for sharing.

Reply
Annecdotist
7/5/2015 07:58:25 am

What came across in the book for me was that the two wartime generations were heroic (if killing people in a good cause can ever be considered as such) but that Viola – and perhaps many others of her (our?) generation – were not and squandered the freedoms that the previous generation had fought for. (But of course that's an oversimplification). I'm not sure either about needing fiction to inspire, but it might well be about the insignificance of life and noble deeds within it when everything gets mudded up in the end (rather like our brown paint). I think you're going to have to read the whole book and judge for yourself!

Reply
Charli Mills
7/5/2015 04:42:14 pm

After reading your comment at Carrot Ranch, I see this review in a different light. I'm intrigued by how the author chose to tell the story through different perspectives and non-linear narrative. Thanks for pointing her out to me!

Reply
Annecdotist
8/5/2015 09:12:23 am

In Naomi Frisby's review, she points out that each chapter reads as an exquisite short story, yet it all flows so smoothly in the back and forth momentum I was hardly aware of the structure. It's a lovely novel.

Reply
Geoff link
8/5/2015 04:44:43 am

I like the notion about truth and lies not mattering as you age because it will all get forgotten in the amnesiac mess of history. Seems like a truism not usually acknowledged. And shaping character in adversity. My parents always said they loved wartime not the war. They could easily define themselves in prime colours. Outside of such easy right and wrong it is a tricky path to forming an idea of self, isn't it.

Reply
Annecdotist
8/5/2015 09:17:58 am

Perhaps one of the (many) compensations of getting older! I like that point about your parents loving wartime but not the war – there were lots of advantages in being united against a shared enemy. In fact, I thought about what you'd said about your dad's wartime experience when I was reading this, I suppose in relation to the contrast between his wartime role and his gentle character. And as I'm reeling right now from the devastating election result today, your comment about people preferring an easy and clear divide between right and wrong perhaps accounts for as having voted in another five years of shitting on the vulnerable.

Reply
sarah link
10/5/2015 05:30:41 pm

Interesting comment you wrote that "In Naomi Frisby's review, she points out that each chapter reads as an exquisite short story." That would be a wonderful reading experience if done well. I really wish they had chosen a different cover!

Reply
Annecdotist
11/5/2015 06:33:11 am

I hadn't given much thought to the cover, but now you've got me wondering why they chose it. If there was a scene in the novel in which a rabbit is killed, I can't remember it. Or wonder if it's supposed to represent the slaughter in the war? But you're right, it might put readers off a story which, although it doesn't shirk the horrors of war, is a jolly good human story.

Reply
Tracey Scott-Townsend link
11/5/2015 06:48:46 am

I loved Life After Life and every other Kate Atkinson novel I've ever read (and I think that's all of them). Looking forward to this one.

Reply
Annecdotist
11/5/2015 07:00:36 am

They're flagging it as better than Life After Life – so I think you won't be disappointed.

Reply

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