Thank you to Netgalley and the Publishing Company for this Advanced Readers Copy of Blue Ruin by Hari Kunzru!

Blue Ruin by Hari Kunzru was a bit slow for me. The story has a thoughtful and introspective tone, and Kunzru’s writing style is rich in detail. For those who enjoy character-driven narratives that delve deep into psychological and societal themes, this may be a good fit. However, it didn’t quite capture my interest as much as I’d hoped, making it feel a little drawn out at times.

Almost every character in this is deeply unlikable, some downright toxic and unredeemable. And yet, Kunzru's masterful prose and narrative voice makes it a very easy read. It's essentially a story about the toxic intersection of art and class and race dynamics, all culminating in some kind of inevitable reckoning during the pandemic. While I enjoyed the unfolding of the past and present parallel narrative of chance encounters and all the ways art connects and distorts human relationships, I feel like the author dropped the ball at the very end, which coincided with the events around the George Floyd protests. I feel like we were being set up for something more meaningful given the pandemic setting, but it amounted to very little in terms of closure or even a meaningful end after truly harrowing continent-traversing journeys.

Thank you @netgalley for the Advanced Reader Copy of Blue Ruin by Hari Junzru. This is a covid novel. Jay is struggling, and he goes to make a grocery delivery at a fancy house in upstate New York. There he finds his college girlfriend, who is now married to Jay’s art rival. At one time, Jay and Rob both had great futures, but Rob has succeeded and Jay has stalled. The story follows the three getting to know each other again, and also some personalities imploding. I found all of the characters unlikeable, and that typically does not make a good story for me. For some reason, I do like a novel set during covid, but this one was pretty out there in my opinion. Not really one that I would recommend. #blueruin #harijunzru #bookstagram #netgalley #lovetoread #covidnovel #bookloversofinstagram #takeapagefrommybook

I was really excited to read this book but left feeling disappointed. I understand why the narrator chose to have some degree of reflection when narrating the flashback scenes, but they were written in a really passive tone. The scenes read more like a recounting where the main character was disembodied from the rest of the story instead of a continuation of the narrative. And while there was this tone of reflection, I failed to actually see that reflection. It read as if someone was looking back on their life and hadn't really learned anything. I was unfortunately unable to finish this book since it was archived so I can't say if that changes but at least by the half way mark I was frustrated. The characters themselves weren't particularly compelling and I was bored of their dynamic. I also wasn't aware this was a Covid novel and I just don't want to be reading about covid.

This book serves up a hefty dose of artistic angst and personal drama, following Jay's journey from promising artist to undocumented delivery guy. When he stumbles into a reunion with his ex and her new partner, it's like watching a slow-motion car crash of emotions and unresolved issues. The story jumps around in time, piecing together Jay's fall from grace and setting up a showdown with his artsy past – it's a solid read if you're into character-driven stories with a side of social commentary.

Hari Kunzru’s seventh novel, "Blue Ruin," is a provocative exploration of art, wealth, and identity set against the backdrop of the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The story follows Jay, a struggling artist in upstate New York who makes ends meet by delivering groceries. During his route, he encounters Alice, an old flame, and her husband, Rob, Jay’s former rival from art school. Jay is ill, but due to pandemic concerns, Alice hesitates to let Jay into their home, instead hiding him in a barn as he recovers from his ailments. As Jay recuperates, he reflects on his and Alice's tangled past.

Thirty years ago, Jay and Alice were inseparable, and he shared a competitive yet friendly relationship with Rob. Their shared ambition and drug use bonded them, but their paths diverged as Rob’s art career flourished while Jay spiraled into despair and addiction. Alice eventually leaves Jay to begin a romantic relationship with Rob, adding another layer of tension to their history. Kunzru skillfully unravels the complexities of these relationships, probing the intersection of art, money, and personal integrity."Blue Ruin" raises poignant questions and explores themes of social crises, from systemic racism to neofascism, while addressing Gilded Age income inequality and the paranoia of the Covid era.

While the love triangle at the novel’s core can feel conventional, Kunzru’s lively storytelling and sharp social commentary keep the narrative engaging. Jay’s musings on race, immigration, work, and the meaning of earning a living add depth to this darkly ironic tale of two disparate worlds: the insulated art scene and the isolated reality of the pandemic. Overall, "Blue Ruin" is a dark, intelligent, and thought-provoking examination of the perils and complexities of making art in a fractured society.

Like "Red Pill" and "White Tears," the first two novels in Hari Kunzru’s loosely connected Three-Colors trilogy, the newest and concluding novel, Blue Ruin, stands alone as both a powerful novel of ideas and a compelling story. Although the three books of the trilogy are entirely different in theme, character, and setting, each focuses on specific cultural moments of the recent past. "Blue Ruin" alternates between the London art scene during the final years of the 20th century—in its exhilarating heyday of change, youth, and lucrative optimism—and upstate New York twenty years later, during the COVID-19 pandemic, which so sharply exposed the different trajectories of those with wealth and privilege and those without resources.

Jay—whose single moniker throughout most of the book obscures his last name: Gates, which carries distinctive echoes of Jay Gatsby and his self-creation and yearning—arrives at art school already considering himself an outsider. His Jamaican father long gone, Jay has spent most of his middle-class childhood living with his maternal grandmother after being ejected from the family home due to his white stepfather’s racist antipathy and his white mother’s cowed compliance. Determined, self-critical, and idealistic, Jay becomes close friends with a talented fellow artist named Rob. Once graduated, Jay’s rigorous artistic explorations and performances attract interest from the art world, and, with the support of an influential gallerist, he begins to develop a name for himself. In these early years, Jay also falls hard for Alice, the scion of a wealthy French Vietnamese family, and the two form a fraught relationship that is intense and complicated and ends very on a sudden, ugly note.

Twenty years later, now down on his luck—an undocumented migrant, reeling from the lingering effects of a particularly nasty bout with COVID and living in his smelly car while eking out a living driving for a ride-hail company and delivering groceries—Jay is startled to again encounter Alice and Rob, now riding out the pandemic at a luxurious, wooded estate owned by absent art collector. The scene is set, and complications of the past will play out in the powerful discombobulation of the anxious present. Kunzru employs the pandemic pod to draw a tight circle around his characters, adding in only Jay’s gallerist, Marshall, and Marshall’s unhappy young girlfriend, Nicole. These five characters will negotiate a complex series of interrelationships based on desire, class, race, trauma, history, and ambition. A sixth character, the absent art-collecting landlord will, like Godot, be a pivotal figure of the novel, but perhaps more notable for his absence than his presence.

As always, Kunzru has a keen eye when considering the effects of race and privilege in his characters’ lives; in this novel, he is also focused on questions about the creation of art and the business of art. How is value defined and determined in the art world? Is there indeed such a thing as art without commodification? Is it possible to untangle the intricately conflated strands of creation and consumption? In what ways can life become art, and how might that even look? Three extremely promising young people face creative crises twenty years later: Jay’s single-minded pursuit of a rigorous authenticity has ultimately led him into increasingly dangerous environments, while the commercially successful artist, Rob, has become effectively paralyzed, unable to respond to the pressures of the market. The once generative and independent Alice has now transformed into little more than a frustrated and resentful manager and fixer. Relationships are at their breaking point and the claustrophobic closeness and creeping paranoia of the pandemic infects all.

Kunzru is masterful at sprinkling surprising revelations into the plot, which will keep readers continually reshaping their impressions as more intriguing details are unveiled. Ultimately, Jay will not share the fate of his near-namesake, Jay Gatsby. This novel may raise more questions than it answers, but Kunzru is wise to utilize the urgencies of the pandemic—the very definition of an unknowable future—to spur his characters into grappling with their complicated pasts and imagining lives beyond lockdown.

This review will appear in the July 24 edition of BookBrowse

As most reviews will mention, Blue Ruin is the final book in a thematically-linked trilogy by Hari Kunzru. In this last piece, he explores what defines art and artist in a capitalist world. Our protagonist, Jay, reencounters his past girlfriend, Alice, and former friend, Rob, both of whom he knew twenty years prior as the three started their careers as artists and curators. Alice and Rob are now married and well-off while Jay has been doing manual labor and low-level jobs instead. We come to find out that rather than pity him, we should see him as morally superior to his friends who have sold themselves out, particularly since he's actually been living in poverty and obscurity as a form of performance art all along.

I found the general plot and relationships to oscillate between boring and stereotypical. The moral high ground that Jay achieves by self-deprivation lacks purpose and begs the question: If no one is around to observe your performance art, are you just...living your life? Dwight Garner captures this feeling in his trenchant NYT review, "Are tribulations tribulations if you can be rid of them at the snap of your fingers? Can inventing and enduring them become a form of moral tourism? “People in her world had insurance,” Jay sneers about Alice in her compound. We all agree that compounds, especially when owned by other people, are bad. They’re where billionaire villains sharpen their mustachios. But is Jay better than Alice because he chooses to live without health insurance?"

At one time, Jay was a working artist in London. A graduate of a prominent London art school, he was heading toward greatness and everyone he knew seemed to have his path as a celebrated artist already paved for him. But now Jay is living out of a car in upstate New York, an undocumented alien, delivering groceries to the upscale homes during the peak of the pandemic.

One afternoon when making a delivery to a large house on a sprawling acreage of land, Jay recognizes Alice, a former lover of his back in art school. Their relationship had been a bit stormy and ended when Alice and art student Rob left for America where they clearly now found wealth and comfort.

Although Jay hopes Alice won't recognize him - a shell of what he once was - she does and encourages him to come to her home until the pandemic passes. There he meets an eccentric gallery owner and his girlfriend and Jay is confronted with his past, his future, and the present that could have been.

This is a really splendid tale of art, love, and dreams, and art, love, and dreams lost.

We don't really get the sense that Jay regrets his life until he sees himself reflected in the others around him. And author Hari Kunzru (I've not read anything by Kunzru previously) weaves some of the past into the story so that we can get a direct, first-hand look at Jay, Alice, and Rob's lives when the future was wide open in front of them.

The relationships are quite powerful without being confrontational or full of a phony romance. What Jay and Alice and Rob have seems both idealized and 'real' at the same time. We move on, but we stay connected - that connection is as thick or thin as the original relationship was strong.

I'm typically not a fan of books that bounce back and forth in time, but somehow it really works well here. In part I think it's because we're not going to the past to set up some big plot point, we're going to the past to understand a character and how they have (or have not) changed.

This is smart, funny, touching, and I wasn't even bothered by the Covid references.

Looking for a good book? Anyone interested in art or had dreams of following their heart into one of the art professions, should really connect with Blue Ruin by Hari Kunzru.

I received a digital copy of this book from the publisher, through Netgalley, in exchange for an honest review.

Blue Ruin is narrated by Jay, a former artist who immigrated to America and has become an essential worker during the Covid pandemic. Barely surviving, he can't afford to stop working even though he is recovering from the virus. While one of his trips delivering groceries, he encounters Alice, his ex, who married his former best friend Rob, who she cheated him on with twenty years ago. During the encounter, Alice realizes Jay is very sick and doesn't have a place to stay, so he offers him a barn off the propiety where they're staying so Jay can recover. A good chunk of the book is about Jay and Alice's relationship, how they fell in love and eventually fell apart. It also talks a lot about Jay and Rob's friendship during art school in England and their respective artistic careers.

The first half of the book was very engaging, the second half was about how Jay, Alice, Rob and two of his coworkers try to cohabit during quarantine. I don't know if I have PTSD from that time but I can really relate to that feeling of going insane inside a house while the world out there is falling apart. The writing was very good and but unfortunately near the ending felt flat, almost boring. I was waiting for a plot twist that never came. Anyway, I enjoyed getting a peek at the art world and how artists come to create their works.

This was a beautifully written piece of literary fiction. The main protagonist, Jay, is trying to recover from a severe case of Covid. He was just kicked out of his place in NYC and is living in his car while making money delivering groceries. In a separate timeline, in 1990s London, Jay, his girlfriend Alice, and his best friend Rob are all art students living a drug-fueled life in this art scene, experimenting and hoping to "make it" as artists. After abandoning Jay, Alice and Rob run off together, end up married, and 20 years later are self-isolating during the pandemic in a house in NY where Jay happens to be delivering groceries. Alice tries to hide and care for Jay, who is not physically doing well. When Rob and the others find out, tension builds between these characters.
This is the first book I've read by Kunzru and I thoroughly enjoyed it although it could be a bit slow at times, and a bit overly dramatic at other times. However, Blue Ruin is a character-driven novel with enough of a plot to hold one's interest. This is also a novel about art, the creative aspects as well as the financial side of it. What is considered a successful artist? I think anyone who cares about the art world will enjoy Kunzru's thoughtful writing on this subject and enjoy the dynamics between these characters. So thankful to Knopf and NetGalley for an advanced copy of this book.

Fundamentally a love-triangle story told in vignettes, which takes place in the world of art school and beyond, and presented in long flashbacks, this tale of ambition and dysfunction is deeply fascinating and hard to put down. It’s mainly a series of character studies of the three main protagonists, who find and grapple with varying levels of career success, then head their separate ways after much heartbreak. In the climax they are reunited in a remote NY state location during the COVID emergency, where their demons are finally confronted.

The last couple of years, there have been a lot of books about COVID and a lot of books about Art. I feel as though I've read quite a few of each category. Blue Ruin is one of the most interesting portrayals of both that I have read. It certainly had some flaws but I found myself drawn in by the story, particularly some of the more bizarre elements.

Jay is an artist, or at least he was. Now, he's recovering from COVID and taking odd jobs, like delivering groceries, to survive. One of his grocery deliveries reconnects him with Alice, a former lover who is hiding out with her husband (also an artist), and his gallerist in a large house in upstate New York. What starts out as an awkward encounter leads to uncovering buried memories while all the characters react in their own ways to the ongoing pandemic.

The anxiety of the middle months of the pandemic (e..g summer 2020) was portrayed well here. Each one reacts in different ways, with some more indifferent and others feeling that the world is on the brink of collapse. This anxiety becomes one of the major plot drivers and the way that some of the characters react is somehow absurd and realistic at the same time. The 2020 scenes are also full of claustrophobia, despite the characters living on a massive property. They don't leave and they don't even wander around much. It gives the setting a creepy feel.

What Kunzru does really well here is write about art. While 2020 is the frame of the book, much of the story takes place in Jay's reminiscences of his time in art school in London in the 90s. We get a good mix of art student angst and descriptions of the art pieces that he and Rob produced over the years. There's a lot of thematic overlap here with Memory Piece by Lisa Ko; but Kunzru does it better, particularly the performance pieces that Jay creates. Like in the pandemic sections, there is a touch of the absurd here that borders on unrealistic yet somehow works.

Overall, I really enjoyed this book. There were a few moments where the book slowed down (especially the extended My Year of Rest and Relaxation-esque part of the book) and I wasn't as hooked by it. But I gobbled up the art portions in particular, as well as the propulsive last third of the book. I would definitely recommend, especially if you like books about art.

I loved this book! The beginning was very relatable, a driver bringing groceries to a cabin during Covid-19. However, then suddenly the driver realizes he knows the cabin owner from earlier in his life, in fact they lived together. So much time has passed since they split. The book goes through everything that happened when they met, after they split, and then what happens in the present time. It all ties together, weaving in so many other people, and taking place in the world of art. I absolutely loved it and could not put it down!

Blue Ruin
By Hari Kunzu

This is a book about many things: the world of art and artists; the covid pandemic; relationships, past and present; addiction; race; and most of all, freedom and the price to be paid for it.

There are three main characters here – Jay, Alice and Rob. Twenty years ago Jay and Rob were art students and friends. Alice is the magnet who draws them together and ultimately pushes them apart. Jay and Alice are the original couple, but race, cultural differences, and drugs force Alice to turn to Rob, who wants to be a commercially successful artist.

Now, during the pandemic, we find Jay is a broken down, homeless man reduced to driving an old car as a delivery service for groceries. He arrives at a walled-off mansion upstate to deliver groceries to find that his friends from the past are in residence. Thus follows the story of what has happened to them all in that time lapse.

Though the writing here is good, I didn't feel the relevancy of the story, which is why I gave it only four stars

so sorry that this is coming to y'all so late! Life got crazy and I graduated from college but thank you endlessly for the ARC despite the one star review.

-- SOME THOUGHTS --

Blue Ruin? More like Beige Rebuild?

This book is aggressively plain and average and the averageness comes from its attempts at getting me to give a fuck about boring, plain art student protagonists that can easily be swapped out for any artsy literary protagonists in recent memory. The absolutely riveting frame premise with which this really bland novel hangs off of is quite frankly abandoned and while I was reading about drug fueled exploits, I kept thinking about Jay in the barn and the missed opportunities happening that never made it to the page.

Thank you endlessly for the ARC and my sincerest and deepest apologies for the lateness of this review.

I appreciate Hari Kunzru's astute and literary style, but this one just didn't land for me. I think it was a little too subtle and indirect in ways that made me lose motivation to finish the story. But I'm really glad I gave it a chance.

this had beautiful prose and i love themes of art and capitalism. plot was interesting as well! i enjoyed reading this, but i'm giving it 4 stars instead of 5 because i don't think this will stick with me that much.

Hari Kunzru is one of the most exciting voices working today. And his latest offering, BLUE RUIN, finds him targeting the contemporary art world -- and also capitalism? how Covid threw inequalities into high relief? It's somewhat of a departure from RED PILL, gone is the paranoia so central to that novel, though thematically there are obvious through lines across the trilogy of books. And there's a central romance to consider. I found myself deeply drawn to these characters, and invested in their predicaments. And I look forward to whatever Kunzru does next.

Thanks to the publisher for the e-galley!