A god in ruins, by Kate Atkinson

A companion novel to her wonderful Life after life.  Both revolve around World War II as experienced by the British and feature many of the same central characters.  In the first book, Ursula Todd lives and dies many times while experiencing alternative histories, but much of the action of the book takes place during the Blitz.  This new novel follows her brother Teddy’s war as a fighter pilot based in Yorkshire as he makes seventy night bombing raids over Germany, rather miraculously surviving them.  Only 50% did, and the odds of someone who entered the war at the beginning making to the end fall to 10%.  Interspersed with vivid and accurate accounts of these raids and the emotional tensions before and during a bombing run, is the account of his life after the war.  He marries the girl next door, who dies tragically soon, leaving him to raise his resentful young daughter, Viola.  Viola’s life as an adult is a haphazard mix of sixties-style hippie communes, single parenthood raising Sunny (Sun Edward Todd) and Bertie (Moon Roberta Todd), a bad marriage, and a life still full of bitterness at sixty.  Though she becomes a successful author, not much about life, including her 98-year-old dying father, pleases her.  Less unexpected than Life after life, A god in ruins still saves one last big surprise for the end.  I found the character of Viola a bit overdrawn, but loved Teddy, who after surviving the war vows “to be kind,” and his two grandchildren, who manage to come through their own battles with Viola’s indifferent and damaging mothering with their characters intact.  464 pp