That’s when we’re mostly learning about late-life Teddy, an aging grandparent whose past emerges in memory and reverie. Teddy is surrounded by far less appealing characters in “A God in Ruins,” particularly in the first half of the book. Readers fell for Ursula and Teddy and the rest of their siblings their glamorous, kooky aunt their parents and neighbors for Ursula’s lovers and friends. The first novel’s innovative structure made it exciting, but its true charm was in the rich family life drawn by Atkinson (with no shortage of morbid wit), counterbalanced by harrowing scenes of London during the Blitz. You don’t have to read “Life After Life” to get “A God in Ruins,” and sadly, the new book doesn’t live up to the promise of its predecessor.
In a later thread in that book, she allowed him to survive his fiery plane crash, and he is at the center of “A God in Ruins,” which she calls not a sequel to the previous book but its companion. He was the perfect little brother, precocious and curious and sweet, and Atkinson seems not quite able to let him go. Teddy was Ursula’s younger brother, and his death, coming near the end of the book, was heartbreaking. “Life After Life,” a charming and innovative 2013 bestseller, told the story of Ursula Todd, a Greatest Generation Brit who expired again and again (and again and again), each time being reborn into the same life where she just might, with the right combination of luck and pluck, get a chance to take a shot at Hitler. But hadn’t Teddy died during the war in Kate Atkinson’s last novel, “Life After Life”? As the book picked up momentum, it was throwing Teddy Todd, a World War II pilot, 40 years ahead to a full life of parenthood and grandparenthood. About 50 pages into “A God in Ruins,” I got confused.
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