The Ruins

(Paperback, New edition)

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Description

When Adam Kussgarten's twin brother is found gunned down just yards from his flat, Adam is drawn out of his solitary, dream-like life into a neon-lit world of forgery, deceit and violence. The Ruins is the story of twin brothers - Adam and Brandon - who haven't spoken for decades, When Brandon is found gunned down just streets from Adam's flat, Brandon's girlfriend enlists Adam to find out what he was doing there and who killed him. Shy, stuttering Adam finds himself caught up in his brother's world of deception, violence and forgery. As things turn increasingly dark and his entanglements with his brother's family grow, he's faced with a choice of whether to dive deeper into Brandon's world and risk losing himself, or turning his back on his future.

Reviews

"The Ruins reads like Raymond Chandler remixed by James Lasdun: barbed apercus and killer images flare across each page, even as unsettling elements moil below, in pursuit of more sinister ambitions. Every great noir tale is at some level a fantasia on the slipperiness of identity; Osman has written a great noir tale." - Martin Seay, author of The Mirror Thief "The Ruins is an intriguing and beautifully-written tale of two brothers, filled with music and danger. But at its heart this is a novel about being restless and lonely; about how the inability to create something transient leads to a silent despair and the desire to be someone else." - Mariana Enriquez, author of Things We Lost in the Fire "Oozes quiet sedition." - Sukhdev Sandhu, author of Night Haunts "There's a touch of Pynchon in this complex, woozily dream-like novel about music, mystery and imagined worlds..." - Ian Rankin "The Ruins is such a brilliant and idiosyncratic thing. It's hectic, soulful, elegant, and wickedly clever. It somehow approximates the immersive experience of listening to a life-changing album, and it also has some of the best line-by-line prose I've read in a really long time." - Anna Smaill, author of The Chimes "The debut from Suede founding member and bassist Mat Osman is an altered state of a novel, mixing the crime of LA noir, the ambient cityscapes of JG Ballard and dark language games of Thomas Pynchon, all imbued with a sensitivity to the magical - and powerful - properties of making and listening to music." - George Chesterton, GQ "Fantastic debut novel. Magical, surreal, disturbing. Reminded me in places of early Iain Banks and DBC Pierre." - John Niven "Redolent of The Talented Mr Ripley, Performance and Theodore Roszak's Flicker, spanning London, LA and Las Vegas, The Ruins by Suede guitarist Mat Osman contains multitudes; it has all the makings of a cult classic." - Irish Times

Author Bio

Mat Osman is the bassist and founding member of iconic British rock band Suede.