The novel moves freely - sometimes from one sentence to the next - across almost a century and four generations of the Todd family, from Teddy's parents, stalwart Hugh and dramatic Sylvie, to his grandchildren, the hapless boy Sunny and Bertie, the sweetly sensible girl whom Teddy considers "his legacy, his message to the world."
Teddy may get just one lifetime, but Atkinson does not deliver it in linear, chronological fashion. This time he gets a life that is different from all of those and fully fleshed out, a portrait that ranges from boyhood to deep old age, wheeling always, again, around the war, when Teddy served as an RAF bomber pilot. In the previous book, Teddy's life, too, had different versions because of his connection to his sister. A God in Ruins focuses on Ursula's brother Teddy, the beloved golden boy among his five siblings.
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