Category Archives: World War II

A God in Ruins by Kate Atkinson (Little, Brown)

Posted on March 8, 2015 | Leave a comment

God in RuinsI was fortunate to get permission to download a copy of Kate Atkinson’s terrific forthcoming novel, A God in Ruins. I  began reading it immediately, ready for a treat. This new novel focuses on Teddy, a minor character from her previous novel, Life After Life; Atkinson calls this one a “companion piece” rather than a sequel. I read it over the course of 3 days, and now I’m sorry I’m finished; I should have made it last longer.

Teddy Todd is the younger brother of Ursula, the main character from Life After Life. The central event in Teddy’s life is his World War II service as an RAF bomber pilot. During the War, he was never sure if he’d return, if there would be an “after;,” his survival makes him determined to be kind and enjoy the life he’s been given after he’s been responsible for so much death. He marries his childhood sweetheart, Nancy; they have one child, Viola, and two grandchildren. Life isn’t always easy, but he takes it as it comes, reveling in the English countryside, doing his best to love the difficult people around him. This is the bare bones on which Atkinson hangs her absorbing story of how four generations deal with what life sent them.

Atkinson plays with time, deconstructing the narrative in many ways: by mixing up time periods in each chapter, by casually dropping information about the future, by repeating events from a different character’s point of view, and by foreshadowing. One event calls up another, filling in details, adding roundness and resonance to characters and events. Teddy’s grandson, exploring in the attic finds Teddy’s war medals and keepsakes. These objects return in later chapters when we learn more about Teddy’s war experiences; because we’ve already thought about the objects when Sunny found them, their meaning is more emotional and faceted.

Ursula makes tantalizing cameo appearances in this novel; she’s Teddy’s beloved sister, offering advice and support. For those of us who read Life After Life, when we hear about her death, we’re startled–didn’t she keep on living? Other characters, like Teddy’s cranky daughter Viola and her children Sunny and Bertie, step off the page, full of life and longing, shaped by the times they live in but very much their own people.

The novel is filled with wonderful humor. Teddy’s daughter, Viola, pushes him from his house to “independent living” then to a “care home.” In his nineties, Teddy reflects that “living in captivity” has “clearly prolonged his life.” The chapter describing Viola’s visit to Teddy in the care home is hilarious and sad, a perceptive set piece on how we treat the elderly.

The sections set during the war, especially Teddy’s experiences as a pilot and wing commander are painfully vivid, capturing Teddy’s inchoate fears, his relationship with his crew, and the emotions he feels as he sees the destruction they’ve brought down on German cities.  These sections fill out Teddy’s character in a most rewarding way.

Atkinson has complete control over her narrative and characters;  it’s such a pleasure to surrender to her stories. I’ve read all of Atkinson’s novels, starting with Behind the Scenes at the Museum; sorry I can’t read them again for the first time.

 

 

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Posted in England, Families-Fiction, Fiction, World War II

The Exiles Return by Elisabeth de Waal

Posted on February 21, 2014 | Leave a comment

Exiles ReturnI discovered this lovely novel because I’m a big fan of The Hare with Amber Eyes, a memoir written by the author’s grandson, Edmund de Waal. (More about that book at the end of this post.) Elisabeth de Waal survived “interesting times” as the Chinese proverb would have it; that is, she and her family survived World War II, as so many Jews did not. She was born Elisabeth von Ephrussi, in 1899, daughter of one of the great banking houses of Europe, growing up in a fabulous palais on the Ringstrasse in Vienna. She studied philosophy, law, and economics, and corresponded with Rilke, to whom she sent her poems. The Exiles Return is one of several novels she wrote; it was never published in her lifetime.

The Exiles Return is about three people who come to Vienna from the United States in the early 1950s for very different reasons. Austria, like much of Europe, was a mess after the War and it was partitioned by the Allies, who occupied it until 1955. Kuno Adler is a medical researcher who hopes to reclaim his old job; Theophil Kanakis is a wealthy Greek who hopes to reclaim a life of partying and subversion; Resi is a young girl whose Austrian immigrant parents hope that she will recover from depression in a new environment. These three people give  us entree into different parts of society; there are complex layers of expectations, disappointments, and thinly veiled violence that operate on their lives.

The pleasure of this novel is in the complexity of the characters and de Waal’s refusal to make things simple. The publisher compares her writing to Irene Nemirovsky’s books about World War II in France, and there is something to that comparison, but for me, de Waal is the more engaging writer.

Back to The Hare with Amber Eyes: in one of the great family memoirs of recent years, Edmund de Waal combines memoir with art and history in the most compelling way. The hare of the title is a piece of netsuke that becomes a leitmotif in the story of the Ephrussi family, who started in Odessa as grain traders and became a banking family in Vienna and Paris that rivaled the Rothschilds. Because Edmund de Waal is a well-known ceramicist, the memoir is not  just about a piece of art, but in the poignant and exquisite way de Waal tells the story, the book itself becomes a work of art.

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Posted in Fiction, World War II