{"product_id":"9780814726853-the-ruins","title":"The Ruins","description":"\u003cmeta content=\"text\/html; charset=utf-8\" http-equiv=\"Content-Type\"\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan\u003eWhen 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.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cp\u003eSet among the spinning cogs and wheels of a lavish dinner club for the \"gastronomical Elect,\" \u003cb\u003eThe Ruins\u003c\/b\u003e 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.\u003cbr\u003e 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.\"\u003cbr\u003e Easily enticed from the artless squalor of his past into the dazzling and treacherous table politics of \u003cb\u003eTheRuins\u003c\/b\u003e, 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 \u003cb\u003eThe Ruins\u003c\/b\u003e–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.\u003cbr\u003e 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, \u003cb\u003eThe Ruins\u003c\/b\u003e marks the arrival of a major new literary talent.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Rarewaves","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":55208646967670,"sku":"9780814726853","price":37.54,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0092\/7504\/8033\/files\/orig_10956072_19680389_20241209075138.jpg?v=1738220213","url":"https:\/\/www.rarewaves.com\/products\/9780814726853-the-ruins","provider":"Rarewaves.com","version":"1.0","type":"link"}