A God in Ruins (Todd Family, #2) in Reading with Style

Mar 22, 2015 Connie G rated it really liked it

Shelves: war, historical-fiction, world-war-ii, england, aviation

A God in Ruins is a companion novel to Life After Life, the story of Ursula Todd who expired and was reborn multiple times during the first half of the 20th Century. Her brother Teddy was a RAF pilot during World War II who was shot down and missing in action. In A God in Ruins we learn that he had been in a German POW camp for two years before returning to England.

The book is written with a constant shifting back and forth in time. The story starts slowly with incidents about Teddy's childhood ...more

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Jan 05, 2016 Rosemary rated it really liked it · review of another edition

I'm not a huge fan of Kate Atkinson except for Life After Life, which I loved. I found the first 100 pages or so of this one quite hard going, and if I was the kind of person to give up on books, I would have done. But then it hooked me, especially in the second half, because we start seeing the same events from different points of view.

(view spoiler) ...more

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Mar 25, 2015 Sam rated it it was ok · review of another edition

Shelves: borrowed-books, books-of-2016

I seem to be alone on this, but this was such a disappointing read for me! I absolutely loved Life After Life when I read it earlier this year, so I was really excited about this companion novel. That excitement vanished pretty quickly once I started reading.

Nancy describes Teddy's life after the war as "plodding" at one point, and that really is the perfect term. This book just plods along with nothing really happening. Even the things that do happen end up being almost non-events because they ...more

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Jun 11, 2016 Kate S rated it really liked it

Shelves: 2016

I liked this one way more than Life After Life. Teddy's story was more engaging (for me) than Ursula's. ...more

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Jun 21, 2016 Hilary rated it really liked it

Read it if you liked Life After Life. Wow.

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Jan 28, 2016 Thomas Acland rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: set-in-the-uk, set-in-france, 2010-s, historical-fiction, 21st-century, war, adventure, set-in-germany, wwii-fiction, military

I'm not sure what it is that I like so much about Kate Atkinson's novels, maybe it's that she's my mums favourite author and we have very similar tastes in books.

This is again a captivating read set over a number of decades and although the plots jumps all over the place they storyline flows well.

There is the usual humour to be expected and quick turns of phrase that I would love to remember but know I'll forget.

I wasn't keen on the ending, but maybe that's just because I wanted to be able to ...more

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