A God in Ruins by Kate Atkinson
I've always really enjoyed Kate Atkinson's books, ever since she burst onto the scenes with Behind the Scenes at the Museum twenty years ago.
She's highly clever, entertaining and playful in her writing. Her books defy easy pigeon-holing, although the Jackson Brodie series are sort of whodunnits. I once heard her speak at a literary festival and she was just as extraordinary in person as she is on the page.
I loved Life After Life, her 2013 novel about the Todd family, who live in Fox Corner. That novel’s heroine, Ursula Todd, is given the chance to live her life again and again in many variations over the first half of the 20th century. The different outcomes – usually the difference between life and death – depend on the smallest, most insignificant-seeming choices. So there are echoes here of Laura Barnett's The Versions of Us, although Atkinson does a more convincing job.
Life After Life was an absorbing family drama played out through two world wars. As a reader it was hard not to care about characters and celebrate the second chances that the author grants them in her different versions.
And one of those characters was Ursula’s much-loved younger brother Teddy who, in the final narrative, survives to become a bomber pilot in the second world war, is reported missing, presumed dead during a raid in 1943. The author granted him an eleventh-hour reprieve, and he turned up at the end of the war, having spent two years as a Prisoner of War.
A God in Ruins, published in 2015 and the winner of the Costa Prize and now out in paperback, is Teddy's story. It's a companion piece, rather than a sequel, but it's hard to judge how that would feel to a reader coming in 'cold' to the story. There is much overlap, both in content (the characters, for example) and in the compositional structure which sees the narrative flitting back and forth in time from Teddy's childhood in the 1920s to his old age and then back to his war years.
The war, Teddy and his wife Nancy discover, has changed everything and will overshadow their whole lives. The impact is incomprehensible to the next generation, in particular the wonderfully awful Viola, their only daughter. And this is part of the book's magic: the way the way she creates an entirely believable tension between the generations.
The novel is also about fiction itself: about how we construct stories and use our imaginations. I won't tell you what happens at the end because there is a breathtaking twist, that some people may find infuriating. Another dazzling performance.
The fault in our stars by John Green
I picked this up in a charity shop. It's really a book intended for the young adult market, but I'd heard so much about it (with sales of more than 10 million copies, it's hard to avoid) I wanted to read it. The central character is Hazel, whose been diagnosed with terminal cancer, and her friendship with Augustus Waters, a young man she meets at the Cancer Kid Support Group.
The friendship gradually morphs into something much deeper. “I fell in love with him the way you fall asleep,” says Hazel of Gus. “Slowly, and then all at once.”
But this being a book where cancer features, there's a weepie ending.
If that sounds depressing, it's really not. It's sad, emotional and extremely funny. It reminded me of the wonderful Spoonface Steinberg, a play by Lee Hall that, when it was first broadcast on the radio, had at least one lorry driver pulling into layby because he couldn't drive through his tears. Another book I'd recommend in the same genre is Before I Die by Jenny Downham.
If you've seen the film - which was not universally praised - you might feel no need to read the book. But I'd recommend it. My personal judgement is that it's worth all the fuss.
I've always really enjoyed Kate Atkinson's books, ever since she burst onto the scenes with Behind the Scenes at the Museum twenty years ago.
She's highly clever, entertaining and playful in her writing. Her books defy easy pigeon-holing, although the Jackson Brodie series are sort of whodunnits. I once heard her speak at a literary festival and she was just as extraordinary in person as she is on the page.
I loved Life After Life, her 2013 novel about the Todd family, who live in Fox Corner. That novel’s heroine, Ursula Todd, is given the chance to live her life again and again in many variations over the first half of the 20th century. The different outcomes – usually the difference between life and death – depend on the smallest, most insignificant-seeming choices. So there are echoes here of Laura Barnett's The Versions of Us, although Atkinson does a more convincing job.
Life After Life was an absorbing family drama played out through two world wars. As a reader it was hard not to care about characters and celebrate the second chances that the author grants them in her different versions.
And one of those characters was Ursula’s much-loved younger brother Teddy who, in the final narrative, survives to become a bomber pilot in the second world war, is reported missing, presumed dead during a raid in 1943. The author granted him an eleventh-hour reprieve, and he turned up at the end of the war, having spent two years as a Prisoner of War.
A God in Ruins, published in 2015 and the winner of the Costa Prize and now out in paperback, is Teddy's story. It's a companion piece, rather than a sequel, but it's hard to judge how that would feel to a reader coming in 'cold' to the story. There is much overlap, both in content (the characters, for example) and in the compositional structure which sees the narrative flitting back and forth in time from Teddy's childhood in the 1920s to his old age and then back to his war years.
The war, Teddy and his wife Nancy discover, has changed everything and will overshadow their whole lives. The impact is incomprehensible to the next generation, in particular the wonderfully awful Viola, their only daughter. And this is part of the book's magic: the way the way she creates an entirely believable tension between the generations.
The novel is also about fiction itself: about how we construct stories and use our imaginations. I won't tell you what happens at the end because there is a breathtaking twist, that some people may find infuriating. Another dazzling performance.
The fault in our stars by John Green
I picked this up in a charity shop. It's really a book intended for the young adult market, but I'd heard so much about it (with sales of more than 10 million copies, it's hard to avoid) I wanted to read it. The central character is Hazel, whose been diagnosed with terminal cancer, and her friendship with Augustus Waters, a young man she meets at the Cancer Kid Support Group.
The friendship gradually morphs into something much deeper. “I fell in love with him the way you fall asleep,” says Hazel of Gus. “Slowly, and then all at once.”
But this being a book where cancer features, there's a weepie ending.
If that sounds depressing, it's really not. It's sad, emotional and extremely funny. It reminded me of the wonderful Spoonface Steinberg, a play by Lee Hall that, when it was first broadcast on the radio, had at least one lorry driver pulling into layby because he couldn't drive through his tears. Another book I'd recommend in the same genre is Before I Die by Jenny Downham.
If you've seen the film - which was not universally praised - you might feel no need to read the book. But I'd recommend it. My personal judgement is that it's worth all the fuss.
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