A God in Ruins – Kate Atkinson

Kate Atkinson returns to the Todd family featured in ‘Life After Life’, but this time it is Ursula’s brother Teddy who takes centre stage.  Mercifully, however, we get just one version of his life, albeit in time jumbled slices.

The centrepiece of Teddy’s life, and the book, is his time in the RAF Bomber Command during the Second World War.  That experience forged his personality in the contradictions of combat - a good, kind, brave man who risked his life to kill unnumbered, unknown, and largely blameless foreigners with his deadly ordinance.  A time he looks back on with both pride and guilt.

Around that is spun his relationships with his wife, daughter and grandchildren.  No spoilers here, it is the unfolding of the stories with teasers and revelations that provide most of the appeal.  But suffice to say there is love, loss, misunderstandings, tragedy, estrangement, re-connection, closeness and peace at last.

It is no surprise that it is well-written, meticulously researched and a pleasure to read.  Atkinson excels in family relationships, ensuring they are seen from multiple angles, and in her hands the Todd family are well worth getting to know.

Look Who’s Back – Timur Vermes

It is not difficult to guess, the cover on the paperback features the distinctive black hairline, and the title in black type is placed to double up as a toothbrush ‘tache.

Yes Adolf Hitler finds himself back from the dead, unchanged seventy years on from his Germany’s Armageddon.  He may not have changed but Germany, and the world, has.  Initially he finds it all very confusing but you don’t get to become Reich Chancellor without being able to assimilate facts quickly and adapt rapidly to changes in circumstances.

Two broad strands develop.  In one Hitler, as with any time traveller from the past, gets to comment on the absurdities of the modern world with his outsider’s eye.  In the other he pursues his (unchanged) political objectives, finding modern Germany a fertile ground for his national socialist rhetoric.

But these days the road to social change is not through politics (or violence) but through social media.  He quickly becomes a controversial TV personality and gains traction through the ‘internetworking computer thing’.

A knowledge of the rise and fall of the Third Reich helps with the satire (otherwise an appendix provides a succinct biography of the historical figures) and familiarity with modern German politics would probably makes the comments thereon funnier than to an outsider.

For the non-German it is still an amusing read though probably a longer one than the joke requires.