Thank you to Netgalley and Knopf for this ARC of Blue Ruin by Hari Kunzru.

This was beautifully written. Although mostly unlikeable, the characters were well developed. It wasn’t until close to the end of the book that I finally felt empathy for the characters.

I like books with present and past storylines. I struggled with the first half of the book that mostly took place in the past. I wish there was more frequent back and forth with the past and present storylines to keep my interest. The past storyline read as a diary of a young man to me. I think it was important and necessary for developing the main character, his perception of the supporting characters, and give the reader background, but it made it drag on for me with little dialogue and lacked a Page-Turner feel. I like books that give a question/mystery early on and make me eager to see how the pieces come together. Simply running into an ex under unlikely circumstances wasn’t enough to make me hungry to read the first half. I wish there were more of a hook that helped me enjoy the past storyline more than wondering how many pages before we get back to the present. That said, the second half of the book was an easier/swifter read for me, packed with excitement and “what’s going to happen next?”.

This gets ⭐️⭐️⭐️ from me.

This is the first book I have read by Hari. I will go and read the others. I love this book! I'm a sucker for anything art related so this was perfect for me.

3.5/5 what initially struck me as pretentious ended up leave a lasting impression. Slow building but with more depth of characters than I’d given credit for at first glance.

I submitted a starred review for Booklist. Thanks for the ARC.
I submitted a starred review for Booklist. Thanks for the ARC.

Jay, Alice and Rob attended art school together in London. Now Jay is delivering groceries, living in his car and barely clinging to the edges of society. One day he delivers groceries to Alice, his former lover, and Rob, the guy she left Jay for at the luxury estate where they are holed up (along with another couple, Marshal and Nicole) waiting out COVID. Jay flounders. Alice wants to hide him. Bad consequences ensue for everyone.

I liked this book a lot, once I got past the wold improbability of Jay meeting up with Alice and Rob in America. The whole thing was creepy and claustrophobic, which I’m sure was as intended. Recommended.

Thanks to Netgalley and Knopf for the ebook. In London, fresh out of art school, Jay seems on the verge of a breakthrough in a conceptual art that withholds the actual art from public view and attacks gallery owners and collectors. He tries to explore these ideas with his girlfriend Alice, who one day wants to run her own gallery, and Rob, a fellow artist he met at school who does more traditional painting. The book starts many years later, in the early New York panic days of COVID, where Rob is now the successful artist, Alice is his wife and Jay just happens to stumble upon them as he’s delivering their food order. The book travels back and forth in time to show how they all got there.