Sirk TV Book Review: THE RUINS [St. Martin’s Press]
The context of high society behaving badly is not a new concept but the lengths to which people will go to belittle each other in the name of money is always interesting. “The Ruins” [Phoebe Wynne/St. Martins Press/336pgs] approaches the idea within the ideal of a bad summer in 1985 through the eyes of the daughter of the house: Ruby. Surrounded by the essence of would-be good manners, adults consuming too much booze with too much abandon and the ability to commit capital offenses only to be able to cover it up becomes the status quo for the entire story. The idea of people who are obvious in their disdain versus those who try to worm their way into the idea of what survival or success is is an interesting quandary but ultimately pointless (since they all lose). All these people from the seemingly well-bred arena of English life are absolutely abhorrible, especially Harley. The main part of the novel is set in 1985 but besides references to certain movies that one of the characters is watching, one could hardly tell. The different families involved go up and back to the village on the sea to the Chateau which (because of these horrible people) just seem to exacerbate their stupidity.
Ruby and the daughter of one of the other families there: Imogen are trying to interpret what is going on around but also dismissed when they indicate anything might be wrong, especially as it becomes more and more menacing. They are just told to go “clean up” and “look nice”. The metaphor of Poirot (from “Murder On The Orient Express”) as a metaphor of sorts seems to deepen the progression but the foreshadowing is fairly clear though the identity of a later character returning is not revealed until well into the book. The consequence of all the actions are to be expected with most, except one, not learning likely any lessons at all. The reveal at the end as the basis of the furor is interestingly two fold in the way it happens as to give different perspectives by those who remember it. Ironically the way the book starts off is supposedly to wrap the idea of blame in a different way as well. The reality is that everyone loses here and what could have been a carefree summer (but never could have been) is veiled in the mask of good breeding, good manners and simply appalling human beings. That said, “The Ruins” is effective in showing this with a decent amount of tension while never letting the characters off the hook save for Annie who was blissfully unaware that anything but a glorious summer was had. B
By Tim Wassberg
