A Spy in the Ruins: A Caveat Lector Book

by Christopher Bernard

A great American city is destroyed under mysterious circumstances, wasted by explosions and fire. A lone survivor wanders, lost, among its ruins. Out of a whirlwind of language appear the images of a... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1587901110
• ISBN13: 9781587901119
• Release Date: June 2005
• Publisher: Regent Press
• Length: 543 Pages
• Weight: 1.43 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.2" x 5.3" x 8.6"

Customer Reviews

Unlike any book you have ever read

With the Top 50 and 10 Reviewers excellent reviews spotlighted here, it is doubtful many people will get to my thoughts. However, here goes anyway. I found this book to be one of the most original pieces of literary excursions I have ever embarked upon. In the beginning, I wondered what exactly was I reading? Was I smart enough? Did I have the intellectual endurance? I started slowly but soon gobbled it up, craving more each sitting. The unveiling of the prose before my eyes sent me across various levels of questioning, recollection and ultimately understanding. The structure of writing was one that was sharper than the chards of glass "amongst the ruins," the light revealed through the prisms were transparent glimpses into the past, present and future. Reading this book was a trip, sometimes smooth, at times with controlled turbulence but always soaring to heights known unknown. Read it. It demands your attention, your mind will recoil from the unfamiliarity, it will rejoice in the refreshing literary massage, be stimulated to the extreme and feel enlightened by the challenge of finding meaning amongst the beauty of words strung together like a lovely pearl necklace. I began my review by conceding to the efforts of the Top 50 and 10 Reviewers because they convey the essence of this delightful, challenging and unique piece of literary genius that is "A Spy in the Ruins." Mad props and kudos to Christopher Bernard. The style of writing is innnovative, maybe unlike anything you have ever read. The book ends with a two word sentence, "Your turn." Upon finishing, I wrote down some thoughts influenced by the style of the book (and this review in general) and the final two words, "Your turn." He slowly poured the elixr into the crystal glass, watching the golden brown liquid splash on the ice cubes. Peering in through the etched Waterford, he imagined the subliminal messages, a transparent dream in Ireland, unlike reality but more real. It was the images imagined that reminded him of the nights when he would lie awake late at night, hooking up his two-tone plastic, satellite radio with alligator clips to the cold metal arm of the window crank, reaching out to space, inner space, peace of mind, a piece of your mind, shutout of reality, a new reality, better than reality. The small satellite was a hookup to the outside world. An escape. Outside the represenatives of nations plotted causing fear in their alliance during the coldest of wars that never heated up beyond the Bay of Pigs. Kennedy was charismatic while Kruschev was menacing banging his shoes at the U.N. Twin Towers fall. See Dick. See Jane. See Spot. See OBL run. CIA, MIA. Will we ever learn? We lived on our knees in class, duck and cover, say your prayers. This is just a test. How he longed to be at her command, exerting his control over her as she hoovered over him in full control. Making him feel unlike any other feeling he had ever witnessed. Are you still there? Witnessing the pages unfo

Infinitely rewarding for the dedicated reader

You really have to have an abiding love in reading and an open mind to truly embrace and appreciate this novel. Truth be told, "novel" is not an adequate description of Christopher Bernard's A Spy in the Ruins. This does not read like a novel in the traditional sense; it's been referred to as a literary experiment and a complex anti-novel; it's a post-modern dissection of man and society that pretty much ignores the conventions of traditional fiction. If you are a casual reader, someone who needs plenty of direct action and excitement in order to keep turning the pages of a book, A Spy in the Ruins is not for you - the odds are you won't last ten pages. The writing is intensely abstract from page one, and the sentence structure is either revolutionary or nonexistent. At first glance, it looks like the author just threw a bunch of words together; no commas or semicolons exist to break up the ideas and feelings that pour out of the pages. It resembles stream of consciousness writing, but the lack of punctuation makes it even more complex than that. My initial reaction was, in all honesty, to recoil a bit; this is extreme writing, and, initially, it's very hard to find any path at all through this literary maze. You just have to have the dedication and concentration (and time) to really devote yourself to the read. After a while, you get into the rhythm of the writing, and that is when comprehension begins - it sort of sneaks up on you, really. At that point, you might want to start over from the beginning - that's what I did. The writing does become more linear and less experimental in the second half of the novel, but even then you'll find the reading experience something akin to sailing an unfamiliar (yet beautiful) sea of poetry and meaning. In all honesty, I learned more about the plot of the novel from the back cover than I did the novel itself. In retrospect, that fact doesn't seem all that important, however. What I took away from this novel were not people and events; rather, it was particularly poetic moments, insights into life, flashes of sudden emotional illumination. Bernard manages to convey the intense complexity of deeply personal moments, to almost perfectly describe the kind of emotions and feelings that you never thought anyone could possibly put into words. These kinds of moments can make it seem as if this novel were written specifically for you. The nuance of Bernard's language is disarmingly powerful, allowing him to perfectly express the most personal of emotions in just a few words. What is this book about, really? It's about life. You're basically taken through the entire life of a man as he was and how he might have been (not as it all happened, but via the reflection of memory) - the events that shaped him, the emotions and thoughts that defined each of his personally historic moments, the things he felt but could never say, the doubts and fears that plagued him. It's a virtual retrospective on hu

Make this book your next adventure

Why, when this span of life might be passed as a laurel, slightly darker than everything else green, with tiny waves on the edges of each leaf (like the wind's smile) -: why then have to be human - and, fleeing destiny, long for destiny? ... --from Rilke, The Ninth Elegy Some time after reading Mr. Bernard's novel for the first time, I read E. Snow's translation of Rilke's Duino Elegies, where I kept hearing echoes or reflections of the former work. I don't have the time or expertise to lay my finger on the resemblance: perhaps it is that they both feel topical even while somewhat old fashioned in their intensity. Perhaps it is that they both play with images of country and city, past and future, or that they both partake of an old conversation about Ideal and Actual. Perhaps it is that the language and images in both are the eternal stuff of great poetry. But A Spy in the Ruins is different in one respect. It's a spellbinding tale, a good yarn, and funny. Others have spoken to the novel's literary and social significance, so I'll let these and other bright spots go. What made this an extraordinary read for me was the word play and the sheer fun of the diction, but what was truly unexpected was the fierce grip of the story. I wanted to read it all slowly, to relish the language as I would a late Henry James. But over and over I found myself hurrying to the next page as if it were a good thriller, a "real page-turner." Sure, the self-referential narration periodically disrupts the transparency of the narrative, putting everyone in place - narrator, characters, reader. But then you move from this self-awareness (I am in this chair, holding a book) to a complete immersion in the story. More specifically, I needed a cigarette after chapter 5, and chapter 7 had my heart racing in the streets. Probably not many people will find this book, even fewer will get beyond the first few pages, and fewer still will finish it. Of course, there's no shame in this (a prophet in his own land, the reviled poet discovered only after her death, etc.). Perhaps Mr. Bernard will be another Melville or Wordsworth. But why wait, dear reader? Why put off pleasure until the arbiters of taste tell you it's savory? Find this delectable and dig in. Yum!

'A Sea Change into Something Rich and Strange'

A SPY IN THE RUINS is at once an enigma, a threatening reading feat, a challenging intellectual excursion, and, in the end, one of the most satisfying reading experiences in many years. Christopher Bernard has the gift of blending words, phrases, fragments, imagery, time lapses, free association thinking and a facility with the English language that is nothing short of extraordinary! No names here in this liquid prose, no signposts to jar the flow of the narrative/stream of consciousness, nothing to get in the way of simply absorbing some of the most eloquent, dire, ecstatic, devastating, and remarkably cogent writing imaginable. Perhaps it is the fact that we as a nation are undergoing such shattering natural and unnatural disasters at this moment that makes Bernard's 'story' so exceedingly gripping. Perhaps. But in ways never used before, Bernard conveys a catastrophic destruction of a city (not unlike Katrina's or Rita's venom) leaving behind a sole wanderer who is the 'spy' in these ruins. Through his eyes and memory and suspended state of being he relives his life as it was, as it could have been, as he would have wanted it - finding bits and fragments of memory and metaphor to piece together that is now gone. Cosmos craving recreation out of chaos and throughout it all is a searing obsession with finding love in all its forms. Just when the reader thinks that this long volume of wildly imaginative thoughts and sentences and portions thereof are not meant to be anything but the exquisite poetry they are to read, the story line evolves and suddenly we know this lone man, feel his alienation, fly with his fantasies/delusions/memories/expectations, and a very clear story assembles before our eyes. That kind of literary magic is so rare, so very in the literary bloodline of TS Eliot, Beckett, Woolf, Stein, Joyce, Proust that the book fairly shakes. Christopher Bernard was an unknown name to me before A SPY IN THE RUINS but will be waiting to see if he can maintain this level of exceptional writing in his next book. Though were his the only novel he were to write, it is so fine that it would be enough. Highly recommended for all readers who love challenges, creativity, thinking, visceral and cerebral involvement in literature. A Magnum Opus to be read and then read again. Grady Harp, September 05

Stream of dream prose aspires to be, and is, poetry.

Spy is a work of lyrical virtuosity with a unique narrative style in which prose and poetry divinely blend into "stream of dream". The story line is original and compelling and crafted with a sensibility in the writing that in places left me awestruck. The writing was sensitive, vivid, layered, intelligent, textured, inspired, deeply felt and profound on many different levels. The story takes place amid the backdrop of a wasteland in the ruins of war and can be read at that narrative level. More deeply, the story is about a man caught up in the ruins of his life trying to remember and understand times of innocence and decision and love that have brought him to this point. The innovative writing style, as some have said, harks back somewhat to Joyce but even more so to the existential prose of Samuel Beckett. The writing is so skillfully wrought that it's the many passages on dozens of pages, which I underlined, where the transcendent prose ascends into a higher plane to truly lyrical poetry that I will remember and re-read. The net effect is a stream of dream narrative technique that builds upon stream of consciousness with a truly original, ethereal and intensely personal and vivid writing style. If you are an intelligent reader of literary novels, then you absolutely must read this watershed novel for there is genius in this book. Spy is one of the finest literary novels I've read in years and delivers a literary legacy that should be read slowly, savoured and treasured. I was absolutely blown away by the power and sensitivity manifest in this great novel, which measures well against the benchmark of some of America's truly great literary novels. I can't wait to read his next book.