Blue Ruin
A novel
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4.0 • 19 Ratings
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- $4.99
Publisher Description
A MOST ANTICIPATED BOOK • From one of the sharpest voices in fiction today, a profound and enthralling novel about beauty and power, capital, art and those who devote their lives to creating it
Once, Jay was an artist. After graduating from art school in London, he was tipped for greatness, a promising career taking shape before him. That was not to happen. Now, undocumented in the United States, having survived Covid, he lives out of his car and barely makes a living as an essential worker, delivering groceries in a wealthy area of upstate New York. One day, as Jay attempts to make a delivery at a house surrounded by acres of woods, he is confronted by his destructive past: Alice, a former lover from his art school days, and the friend she left him for. Recognizing Jay’s dire circumstances, Alice invites him to stay on their property—where an erratic gallery owner and his girlfriend are isolating as well—setting in motion a reckoning that has been decades in the making.
Gripping and brilliantly orchestrated, Blue Ruin moves back and forth through time, delivering an extraordinary portrait of an artist as he reunites with his past and confronts the world he once loved and left behind.
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
A conceptual artist considers his past and faces his present in this impressive work of literary fiction set during the pandemic. Jay, Alice, and Rob attended art school together in ’90s London. But Jay hasn’t seen his former girlfriend and friend since the two ran off together, so it’s a shock when Jay—struggling with long COVID—arrives to deliver groceries at a posh gated property outside New York and finds himself mask-to-mask with Alice. The subtle but compelling drama unfolds from there, as Jay attempts to confront his friends, his past, and his art. Author Hari Kunzru delves straight into big questions of financial inequality, artistic integrity, and misinformation. And he cleverly folds these themes into the driving narrative; we were caught off-guard as the novel became ever more tense, quick, and claustrophobic. The characters in this thought-provoking tale aren’t always likable, but their story certainly is.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Kunzru (Red Pill) takes on the excessive and rapacious tendencies of the art world in his dazzling latest. Jay, a 40-something undocumented performance artist from India, left behind the competitive milieu of his London art school after becoming disillusioned, and has supported himself with various manual labor jobs. Now, during the first summer of the Covid-19 pandemic, he lives in his car and delivers groceries in Upstate New York. The gig brings him to the home of his ex-girlfriend Alice and his former best friend Rob, whom Alice left him for 20 years earlier in London. Fatigued and beleaguered by brain fog two months after getting Covid, Jay cautiously reenters his old friends' lives. Alice, stuck managing Rob's studio, is reminded of the freer life she used to lead with Jay, while Rob, a successful painter, reveals himself to be a consummate art monster, cheating on Alice and spending too much of their money on lavish, boozy parties. When Rob's gallerist, Marshal, learns of Jay's long-running self-documentation project, Fugue, he's desperate to work with the performance artist. If Jay doesn't let his life's work be documented, Marshal argues, "It will slip away into nothingness you're just some guy who left the art world." The gripping tension between Jay and the rest of the cast gives way in the graceful final scene to a feeling as melancholy as watching a beloved painting get auctioned off in a beige room at Sotheby's. This is immensely satisfying.
