Set in the heart of the pandemic, Hari Kunzru’s “Blue Ruin” is a meditation on a life in art, exploring the hazy spectrum between compromising, committing, quitting.

Our title character, Jay, seems like he belongs in that last bin as we start the novel. He’s delivering groceries and sleeping out of his car, still sick from an early bout of COVID that got him kicked out of his New York City squat.

Fulfilling an order at a cozy estate upstate, he recognizes an old face behind a mask. It’s his ex, Alice. They haven’t seen each other in decades, but seeing his condition, she practically drags him to crash at an old barn tucked away on the site. It’s an impulsive act of kindness, one that triggers a reevaluation of their art-school days in late ’90s London–and possibly a reckoning too.

Alice, it turns out, is married to Rob. Now a well-known painter, Rob is formerly an art school friend/rival of Jay’s…and the man she left him for. As Jay recovers, we discover how the group met, flashing back to squats and hash and the jousting of young egos before returning to the diminished circumstances of May 2020.

Kunzru does a good job evoking the excitement of the past and the dual slog of the pandemic and middle age. Jay can’t stay hidden on the estate forever. The absentee tech-guru owner has a state-of-the-art security system that’s eventually called into service. When Jay finally meets the rest of the pod taking shelter there–Rob, art-dealer Marshall and Marshall’s girlfriend, Nicole–the drama deepens.

Can Jay’s appearance really be a coincidence? What has he done since he disappeared decades ago? Is Jay still making art? And can Rob get his act together to finish some paintings before his family, and possibly Marshall, go broke?

As a COVID-era novel set among an isolated upstate crew of creatives, “Blue Ruin” can’t help but be compared to Gary Shteyngart’s, “Lake Success,” a much funnier book covering similar terrain. Still, Kunzru does strong work capturing the dichotomies of the art world. One scene conveys the absurdity of scrabbling for sales; another convinces you that a life lived for art may be worth the sacrifice.

Kunzru’s characters feel more like “types” than individuals. This is the kind of book where people say things like, “So there we are, another white man wanting to burn down the world to salvage his fragile ego.” Each role is structured to illustrate a point the author wants to make, and it feels on the nose, even if it’s not necessarily off the mark.

This makes sense, though, because “Blue Ruin” is a book of ideas: about art and striving, rich kids and poor kids, what happens when we succeed and what happens when we fail. It’s engaging and well crafted, particularly if you’re interested in the underlying concept.

Quotes

“There are really only two kinds of artist. You’re either an intellectual or a savage, and you don’t really have a choice about which. Rob was a savage, of course. He liked to approach making things in the manner of a hominid discovering tools. What you have to do, he said, is paint like you’ve never painted before, like you’re seeing color for the first time. I did my best to emulate him, but it was no good. For me, making art was inescapably cerebral. I approached it as a problem, a puzzle that I needed to solve. I was ashamed of that. It felt like a dirty secret, a creative weakness that I had to hide.”

***

“Alice’s competence had survived even the last year of our relationship, when we were actively trying to crash and burn, to let ourselves go to hell. It was a kind of weakness in her. If you’re a problem-solver, sooner or later people learn that they can bring their problems to you, and after that you’re never free.”

***

“She was a rich person, used to interactions in which she was respected, even courted. On the rare occasion when her status wasn’t recognized–by some official or service provider–it was, I imagined, a memorable outrage. She’d find it hard to understand that I had no relationship with the company outside terms set by the app. It was designed that way. Even if you stayed on the phone for hours and finally got to speak to someone in a far-away call center, they had no agency. You could never appeal to anyone’s humanity.”

***

“To twenty-something me, an artist was primarily someone who was trying not to get captured. The world was dominated by the interests of the rich and powerful. It was organized to lure you, to trick you into their service. An artist ought, I thought, to live like a spy, a spiritual fugitive. Art itself consisted of finding ways to say no, to become invisible to power. Only then could an artwork have any claim to authenticity. Even if you found it difficult, or it caused friction with others, it was necessary to refuse entanglements, because they were a way to force you to conform. When I wouldn’t speak to anyone and locked myself in my studio, I was holding a line, taking my vocation seriously. In practical terms, it amounted to the same thing. Rob and I both expected other people to pick up after us. Of the two of us, I was probably the more self-righteous about it.”

***

“‘The artworld likes nothing better than someone who doesn’t seem to want it. That’s always been my problem. They can smell it on me. It’s a dirty smell.'”

Daniel Clowes’ “Monica” is rich and confounding, an artful comic exploring what it’s like to seek but never fully find.  

It’s told in vignettes centering on the title character, a girl whose mother gets caught up in the counterculture and ends up abandoning her. Monica spends much of her life trying to figure out that act. Even in what should be a successful adulthood, she remains trapped in the past, snared by the need to understand what happened to her mother, and by extension, to her.

This quest is anything but straightforward. There are hippie cults, Lovecraftian figures, ghost radios and vague intimations of some apocalyptic event. But there’s also the normal stuff of life: ex-boyfriends, aimless youth, the possibilities of late-life romance. To complicate things further, Monica is prone to writing stories, and some of these fictional accounts enter the narrative, weird little sections in the vein of old Creepy Comics or the “Tales of the Black Freighter” interludes in Watchmen.

Clowes is assured at capturing it all, from cult derangement to edge-of-apocalypse noir to the day-to-day vibes of just never quite fitting in. I found the least fantastical scenes the most engaging. My heart sank with each dippy new lover Monica’s mom takes on; when Monica meets a man she can share her stories with, I was eager for her “October” romance to work out.

The art is excellent throughout, detailed, expressive, carefully blocked and plotted. Clowes’ lines are precise and fine, like something John Severin might offer. But the story itself resists easy explanation. I typically resist ambiguity in this vein, but Clowes is so assured and intentional with what he offers here that I ended up being captivated instead.

An engrossing work of historical fiction, David Mitchell’s “Utopia Avenue” blends “Behind the Music” mythmaking with intriguing light fantasy elements.

Set largely in Britain in the mid-1960s, the novel is a telling of how its titular band makes it. Utopia Avenue doesn’t form organically but is cobbled together by a Canadian producer possibly looking at his last shot overseas.

It includes several musical archetypes: the guitar god, the rowdy drummer, the folk songstress, the working-class bass player with a knack for hooks. Mitchell interweaves actual musical figures from the period, including David Bowie, Brian Jones (a fun, damaged presence), Jimi Hendrix, several stars overseas. Taking real figures and putting fictional words in their mouths can be a dodgy enterprise, but it largely works here, with the real-life cameos expanding “the scene” and the stakes for the band.

Mitchell walks us through the standard music biopic scenes: the rocky first gig, arguments with the label, an overseas tour. These pieces feel familiar, like musical standards, but he does such a good job evoking the group and their dynamics that it’s exciting to see Utopia Avenue’s progression (as well as the obstacles the author throws in their way).

There are setbacks and tragedies–enough to make the book a brisk read. But Mitchell also works to capture the creative energy of making music, the little magic of notes and phrases. This could easily be overdone, full of fluff and sentiment, but he keeps even these conceptual sections focused. They don’t weave off too far into the mystic.

The members of the group are more complex than what we see at the beginning. Abusive childhoods, sexist expectations, autism and asylums: they’re all carefully woven into the narrative, building our sense of who these characters are, what they’re trying to accomplish and why we should care.

There’s even an undertone of fantasy in the mental issues one key character experiences, a storyline that includes some callbacks to other Mitchell books as well as a deep dive into what’s basically magic. I found it fascinating; your mileage may vary.

Even with that caveat, Utopia Avenue’s story feels complete and creative and varied. It’s an accomplishment, one that makes me want to dive back into Mitchell’s earlier works.

Quotes

“Dean never saw the point of church. ‘God works in mysterious ways’ seemed no different from ‘Head I win, tails you lose.'”

***

“‘Our persecutors maintain that’–Francis sighs the word, regretfully– ‘”homosexuals” violate Nature’s law. A decrepit falsehood. Nature’s law is oblivion. Youth and vigor are fleeting aberrations. This truth is the canvas on which I paint.'”

***

“‘Amsterdam won’t be the same without you.’

‘Bless you, but Amsterdam won’t notice a damn thing. The city’s changed since we stayed up late redesigning the future and crashing the royal wedding.’ “Trix traces her forefinger along Jasper’s clavicle. “Remember the free white bicycles? Nobody repairs them now. People think, Why can’t somebody else do it? Or they paint them black and lock ’em up. Provo is winding down. New revolutionaries have grabbed the megaphones. Humorless ones. The ones who quote Che Guevara like he’s a close personal friend. “It is better to die on your feet than live on your knees.” They’ll say, “You can’t make an omelette without breaking eggs,” as if a demonstrator’s spine, or a policeman’s skull, or an elderly widow’s window is only an egg.'”

***

“‘A brain constructs a model of reality. If that model isn’t too different from most people’s model, you’re labeled sane. If the model is different, you’re labeled a genius, a misfit, a visionary, or a nutcase. In extreme cases, you’re labeled a schizophrenic and locked up.”

***

“‘I’m in no mad rush.’

‘Good for you. The word “faster” is becoming a synonym of “better.” As if the goal of human evolution is to be a sentient bullet.”

“A Visit from the Goon Squad” offers an impressionistic look at life in music. Jennifer Egan’s novel jumps from character to character in thinly linked scenes intended to illustrate the triumphs, compromises and, most frequently, failures that accompany the ego-driven impulse of trying to make yourself heard.

Gripping and beautiful written, it shares more sadness than thrills. Our recurring characters include a kleptomaniac with a damaged past who serves as an assistant for a punk rocker turned label mogul. His mentor drifts in from decades back, showing the predatory nature of the scene and the raw atavistic impulse to dominate. We get burnouts and broken writers, despot publicists and stay-at-home dads trying to recollect who they once were. 

It’s not seamless, but it’s tender and deeply felt. Egan absolutely nails the ending too.

Quotes

“She could tell that he was in excellent shape, not from going to the gym but from being young enough that his body was still imprinted with whatever sports he’d played in high school and college. Sasha, who was thirty-five, had passed that point.”

***

“In fact the whole apartment, which six years ago had seemed like a way station to some better place, had ended up solidifying around Sasha, gathering mass and weight, until she felt both mired in it and lucky to have it–as if she not only couldn’t move on but didn’t want to.”

***

“Lou is one of those men whose restless charm has generated a contrail of personal upheaval that is practically visible behind him: two failed marriages and two more kids back home in L.A. who were too young to bring on this three-week safari.”

***

“I looked down at the city. Its extravagance felt wasteful, like gushing oil or some other precious thing Bennie was hoarding for himself, using it up so no one else could get any. I thought: if I had a view like this to look down on every day, I would have the energy and inspiration to conquer the world. The trouble is, when you most need such a view, no one gives it to you.”

French cartoonist Fabien Toulme continues his thoughtful, moving recollection of a Syrian refugee’s complicated journey to France. 

As this second volume starts, Hakim, his new and now pregnant wife, Najmeh, and Najmeh’s family have just moved from a smaller town in Turkey to Instanbul in search of more opportunities. But working under the table is hard in the big city too, particularly as more refugees make their way to the scene. 

So Najmeh’s dad buys a fake passport to make his way to France, bringing his family in soon after to begin the process of applying for refugee status. There’s one issue, though: Hakim and his new son, Hadi, aren’t covered on the family’s status, and so they have to stay behind. 

It’s a stressful, tenuous time, especially since Hakim is forced into sole caregiver responsibility as opportunities to earn money dwindle. Toulme does a great job recounting Hakim’s desperation as he’s forced to bunker down with his son in a hot-plate apartment, his wife mostly reduced to a weeping voice on the phone. 

Things get worse when tragedy strikes back home in Syria, leaving Hakim nearly broken. As he tries to rebound, a paperwork snafu with the French consulate leaves him open to a choice he’s previously dismissed as too risky: making a trip across the Mediterranean with Hadi in search of safe refuge in Europe.

These scenes are the most heartrending in the book. They cover the nervy work of trying to find passage, the preparations for a dangerous journey, the hours of waiting on a remote beach under the watch of armed men. Hakim has prepped as best he can, buying a life jacket for himself and, devastatingly, water wings and a tiny tube for little Hadi. But the journey becomes desperate, with the men jumping into the water to try to swim their raft to shore in the middle of a dark, strange sea. 

Toulme conveys just how frightening it is–how worried Hakim is for his son, and how desperate he’s become to take this risk. Since the series opens with Hakim and Hadi healthy in France, we know they make it, thankfully. But this second book of Hakim’s Odyssey fulfills Toulme’s goal of humanizing the refugees risking their lives to travel to Europe.