God in Ruins (Atkinson)

Book Reviews
(Starred review.) [A]s in Life After Life, Atkinson isn’t just telling a story: she’s deconstructing, taking apart the notion of how we believe stories are told. Using narrative tricks that range from the subtlest sleight of hand to direct address, she makes us feel the power of storytelling not as an intellectual conceit, but as a punch in the gut.
Publishers Weekly


Here's a sequel to Atkinson's remarkably shape-shifting Costa Award winner, Life After Life, telling the story of Ursula Todd's brother Teddy. Teddy is an RAF bomber pilot and aspiring poet for whom warfare was nothing compared with the struggle to adjust to different expectations in peacetime.
Library Journal


(Starred review.) Atkinson constantly keeps us guessing, the story looping over itself in time ("This was when people still believed in the dependable nature of time—a past, a present, a future—the tenses that Western civilization was constructed on") and presenting numerous possibilities for how Teddy's life might unfold depending on the choices he makes.... A grown-up, elegant fairy tale.
Kirkus Reviews