Teddy's memories of his own childhood in Fox Corner, the Todd family's country home, seemed all summers filled with bunnies and skylarks and bluebells, glimmering hot air and long gossamer evenings.
Dutiful father, he gave up his poetry and rambling nature walks, moved into a suburban cottage, taught school and raised his only child, who never recovered from the loss of her mother, and always hated him.
Briefly, Atkinson then tied up loose ends: three members of Ted's crew parachuted successfully, survived in a German POW camp and returned to England after the war; but there was no Viola, no grandchildren; Ursula grieved, as did Nancy; on V.E.
(p. 457) "And, of course," she added, "there is a great conceit hidden at the heart of the book to do with fiction and the imagination, which is revealed only at the end but which is in a way the whole raison d'etre of the novel."(p.
458) Stephanie Merritt commented in The Guardian review, "At first glance A God in Ruins appears to be a more straightforward novel than Life After Life, though it shares the same composition, flitting back and forth in time ... allowing Atkinson to reveal her characters in glimpses over the course of the novel while withholding vital information that creates mysteries at the heart of the story.
"[1] Ultimately, in what critic James Walton called, "one of the most devastating twists in recent fiction," the novel ends with Teddy dying in the war, reversing events and erasing characters.
"—Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nature The novel was widely praised in reviews, described as: "fiction at its best,"[6] "a dazzling read,"[5] "bold, playful and engrossing,"[1] "tender, moving, caustic, and at times, brilliantly funny,"[7] and "a grown-up, elegant fairy tale, at least of a kind, with a humane vision of people in all their complicated splendor.
"[8] Book critic Maureen Corrigan said, "In "A God In Ruins," Atkinson has written a novel that takes its place in the line of powerful works about young men and war, stretching from Stephen Crane's "Red Badge Of Courage" to Kevin Powers' "The Yellow Birds" and Ben Fountain's "Billy Lynn's Halftime Walk.
In the Los Angeles Times, reviewer Carolyn Kellogg said, "sadly, the new book doesn't live up to the promise of its predecessor," citing the effects of unappealing characters, the disappointments of post-war Britain and Teddy's losses in old age.
Deeply grieving for her lost lover, Nancy tells Teddy's sister Ursula: "He would never get married and have children, never live the wonderful life he deserved".
His marriage was cut tragically short by Nancy's brain tumor, his fatherhood fatally blighted by the unrelenting hatred of his only child Viola, and his old age marked by humiliating degeneration and degradation at an inhuman "nursing home".
Given at the last moment a chance to go back and change the way his life had gone, Teddy chooses to die as a young, self-sacrificing war hero - a bit reminiscent of the choice made by Achilles in Greek mythology.
Nancy cannot ever know that, in renouncing his post-war life, Teddy had also created a future in which she would be saved from the brain tumor – though it would be at the side of another man.