Hiya, This Review Has Been Written By Kelly Pells- a guest writer for my blog. Here is her critique of A God in Ruins.
Enjoy!
This book follows the brother of the main character from
Atkinson’s last book, Life After Life,
through the trials of the twentieth century. Aspiring poet, RAF pilot, husband,
father, Teddy must come to terms with life when he never expected to survive
the war.
There was
something oddly comforting in this book, getting lost in the details of someone
else’s life. It was easy to get caught up in the rambling prose, carrying you
along for page after page. However, for all that, I can’t say I really enjoyed
this book. After about fifty pages I realised just how bored I was, and
flicking through the 350 pages I had still to read filled me with dread.
Thankfully Atkinson’s writing style made it easy to finish fairly quickly.
Atkinson does
write well. She does a great job of creating interesting characters described
with vivid detail. She also effectively captures the voices of various ages and
genders, from women in their late twenties to eleven-year-old boys.
There were several
faults I found with this book. The lack of chronology is quite annoying. Just
when you’re getting fully involved with the characters in one decade, the story
jumps into the future, or back into the past. There are also whole sections
that aren’t about Teddy, but concern his family members instead. I found this
really irritating. I wanted to learn more about the main character. Yes, some
of his family members are interesting, but I thought Teddy was supposed to be
the focus of the story.
This is definitely
not an uplifting book either. Atkinson seems to have a depressing fixation on
death. A God in Ruins is full of
illness, sadness and death. This rather takes away from the otherwise
comforting rhythm of the prose.
I wasn’t a fan of
Life After Life, so I wasn’t really
expecting to like Atkinson’s latest offering. I did prefer A God in Ruins, but this isn’t a book I will be recommending to
friends, despite the fantastic reviews I’m sure it will receive from critics.
-Kelly Pells
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