The Ruins

by Trace Farrell

Set among the spinning cogs and wheels of a lavish dinner club for the "gastronomical Elect," The Ruins is a black-eyed, Machiavellian fairy tale for adults, a gleeful cautionary discourse on ambition and ingratitude, and the penalties for disbelief in those forces within oneself.
Like all fairy tales, it turns on subjection-the increasingly comic and catastrophic subjection of "our hero, Tom," a high-minded and half-starved shoeshine...

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0814726852
• ISBN13: 9780814726853
• Release Date: April 1998
• Publisher: New York University Press
• Length: 280 Pages
• Weight: 0.74 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 4.8" x 7.5"

Customer Reviews

Kornreich didn't get it!

Like a writer of "experimental" fiction (whatever that means exactly), Farrell forces a suspension or confusion of expectations; but, she also creates incredible, lush images and wonderful characters and you'll probably want to read THE RUINS in a single sitting. The book made me think of Peter Greenaway movies crossed with CONFEDERACY OF DUNCES thrown into the mind of a re-gendered 21st century Laurence Sterne.

Fabulous and funny first novel

From other reviews I expected this work to be in the vein of pulp fantasy; it isn't that at all. While it has some of the characteristics of a fable it switches from fantastic narrative to funny dialogue through extravagant circumstance. The dialogue had me laugh aloud and the language often made me want to read out loud.