From one of the sharpest voices in fiction today a profound and enthralling novel about beauty
power and capital' s influence on art and those who devote their lives to creating it. Once
Jay was an artist. Shortly after graduating from his London art school he was tipped for
greatness a promising career already taking shape before him. Now undocumented in the United
States he lives out of his car and makes a living as an essential worker delivering groceries
in a wealthy area of upstate New York. The pandemic is still at its height--the greater public
panicked in quarantine--and though he has returned to work Jay hasn' t recovered from the
effects of a recent Covid case. When Jay arrives at a house set in an enormous acreage of
woodland he finds the last person he ever expected to see again: Alice a former lover from
his art school days. Their relationship was tumultuous and destructive ultimately ending when
she ghosted him and left for America with his best friend and fellow artist Rob. In the twenty
years since their fortunes could not be more different: as Jay teeters on the edge of collapse
Alice and Rob have found prosperity in a life surrounded by beauty. Ashamed Jay hopes she
won' t recognize him behind his dirty surgical mask when she does she invites him to
recover on the property--where an erratic gallery owner and his girlfriend are isolating as
well--setting a reckoning decades in the making into motion. Gripping and brilliantly
orchestrated Blue Ruin moves back and forth through time to deliver an extraordinary
portrait of an artist as he reunites with his past and confronts the world he once loved and
left behind.
