The Ruins - Hardcover

Farrell, Trace

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0814726852 ISBN 13: 9780814726853

Publisher: NYU Press, 1998

Synopsis

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 boy. Tom shifts for himself in a dank and vaguely apocalyptic city where "the days come and go in a flat, lurid tide, noon and midnight like sullen twins, so indifferently does light distinguish itself from darkness."

Easily enticed from the artless squalor of his past into the dazzling and treacherous table politics of TheRuins, our hero soon finds himself at escalating odds with the diabolical proprietor, Jones, "an extravagant if charismatic crackpot." Tom's ill-fated efforts to reform The Ruins-finally and improbably rewarded at the glittering Fool's Ball-lead him on a devastating rise and illustrious tumble to humility, humanity, and practical grace.

In the tradition of Thomas Pynchon and Kurt Vonnegut, Trace Farrell delivers this highly original first novel with the arch rhetoric and insinuating charm of a seasoned carnival barker. Slyly drawing the eye to a world teeming with life, after all, no more horrid than gorgeous, The Ruins marks the arrival of a major new literary talent.

About this title

Review:

"Demonstrating a vein of perversity all her own, Farrell makes a strong bid to join the company of elite postmodern comic writers like Coover and Pynchon. Her exciting, funny debut features a naive shoeshine boy who suddenly finds himself working at an infernal upscale restaurant called The Ruins."

-Publishers Weekly

"This magical novel is rich in plot and characters as well as a skillful use of language that is nothing less than musical."

-Library Journal

Synopsis:

When a high-minded and formerly half-starved shoeshine boy rises to greatness in the dazzling and treacherous world of a lavish dinner club for the "gastronomical elect" he finds himself unprepared for the collapse of the grand and glittering world he helped create.

About this edition

• Publisher: NYU Press
• Publication date: 1998
• ISBN 10: 0814726852
• ISBN 13: 9780814726853
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 280