Blue Ruin

Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

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.

Reviews provided by Syndetics

Library Journal Review

While making a grocery delivery during the early months of the pandemic, Jay stumbles into a COVID pod occupied by, among others, his ex-girlfriend Alice and her now husband (and Jay's former best friend), Rob. Twenty years earlier, the three had been part of an artists' community in London. Rob has since become a moderately successful painter, while Jay, a conceptual performance artist, has disappeared from the art world; at the time of the novel's opening, is unhoused, living illegally in the United States, and subsisting on gig work. Rob, who is at the moment artistically blocked, is unwilling to believe that Jay's sudden reappearance in his life is by chance. Meanwhile, gallerist Marshall, who has fallen into the hole of online conspiracy theories, is trying to make lucrative art deals involving Rob and a former mentor. VERDICT Kunzru (Red Pill) has a gift for vivid, visceral description, whether it's the drug-fueled squalor of London's underground art scene or the gentrified New York compound where Jay finds himself. Along the way, there are thematic threads involving the commodification of art and conflicts of class and race (both Jay and Alice are biracial). Kunzru's unique style and perspective make for a fun, though edgy ride.--Christine DeZelar-Tiedman

Publishers Weekly Review

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. Agent: Andrew Wylie, Wylie Agency. (May)

Booklist Review

Years ago, Jay was an artist on the cusp of success. Living in London with his girlfriend Alice, things are on the upswing until Jay starts to question the very purpose of art. He lets it all crash and burn, erasing himself completely from the art world and Alice's life. So it's an almost implausible coincidence that during the COVID-19 pandemic, with Jay living without documents in the U.S., his job as a groceries delivery person brings him back into Alice's orbit. This Alice, reeking "of health that's made of yoga and massage and raw juices and money," is squirreled away in a country home with her husband and a couple of friends to avoid New York City's pandemic nightmare. Alice offers Jay a place to stay. Alice's artist husband, Rob, who was once Jay's closest friend, has opted for a more straightforward path than Jay, leveraging his art for riches. With Jay back, tensions flare over the past and how the group can make art to simply survive. Jay's navel-gazing can feel overwrought, but that's balanced out by the exquisite writing and keen insights into class tensions and creative dilemmas. Kunzru (Red Pill, 2020) affirms that it's always a good time to live an examined life, even during a pandemic.

Kirkus Book Review

A starving artist stumbles into his past--and the ugly side of wealth--in this prickly allegory. Kunzru's seventh novel is narrated by Jay, who in the early days of the Covid-19 pandemic is in ill health, getting by delivering groceries in upstate New York. His route takes him to an estate that's coincidentally occupied by Alice, a former flame, and her husband, Rob, Jay's one-time art school rival. Alice is disinclined to bring him into their pod for fear of infection--or of stoking old drama--so instead hides him in a barn while his health improves. In the weeks that follow, Jay recalls the messiness of their relationships three decades prior: He and Alice were once inseparable, and he and Rob competed in British art school but were also friendly, bonded by ambition and drugs. But as their art world fortunes diverged, Jay's despair and drug use intensified, prompting Alice to leave him for Rob. Kunzru cannily withholds a few details about this dynamic, but from the start the novel is a study of the complications of art, money, and identity. Is Rob more free as an artist for having access to wealthy patrons? Does Jay have more integrity for sabotaging his art world prospects? And why do muses like Alice absorb so much abuse up on that pedestal? This novel completes a kind of trilogy by Kunzru on contemporary social crises, from systemic racism (White Tears, 2017) to neofascism (Red Pill, 2020) to, here, Gilded Age income inequality, topped off with paranoia and misinformation. The love triangle plot is a bit potted, and tonally and thematically Kunzru is borrowing from Martin Amis' 1980s work. But it's a lively, ever-intensifying story as Jay weaves in discussions of race, immigration, work, and what it means to earn a living. It's a darkly ironic tale of two bubbles--an art world divorced from economic reality and a Covid era that segregated us from society. A dark, smart, provocative tale of the perils of art making. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.