The Ruined House: A Novel
Written by Ruby Namdar
Narrated by Paul Boehmer
3/5
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About this audiobook
“In The Ruined House a ‘small harmless modicum of vanity’ turns into an apocalyptic bonfire. Shot through with humor and mystery and insight, Ruby Namdar's wonderful first novel examines how the real and the unreal merge. It's a daring study of madness, masculinity, myth-making and the human fragility that emerges in the mix.""
—Colum McCann, National Book Award-winning author of Let the Great World Spin
Winner of the Sapir Prize, Israel’s highest literary award
Picking up the mantle of legendary authors such as Saul Bellow and Philip Roth, an exquisite literary talent makes his debut with a nuanced and provocative tale of materialism, tradition, faith, and the search for meaning in contemporary American life.
Andrew P. Cohen, a professor of comparative culture at New York University, is at the zenith of his life. Adored by his classes and published in prestigious literary magazines, he is about to receive a coveted promotion—the crowning achievement of an enviable career. He is on excellent terms with Linda, his ex-wife, and his two grown children admire and adore him. His girlfriend, Ann Lee, a former student half his age, offers lively companionship. A man of elevated taste, education, and culture, he is a model of urbanity and success.
But the manicured surface of his world begins to crack when he is visited by a series of strange and inexplicable visions involving an ancient religious ritual that will upend his comfortable life.
Beautiful, mesmerizing, and unsettling, The Ruined House unfolds over the course of one year, as Andrew’s world unravels and he is forced to question all his beliefs. Ruby Namdar’s brilliant novel embraces the themes of the American Jewish literary canon as it captures the privilege and pedantry of New York intellectual life in the opening years of the twenty-first century.
Ruby Namdar
Ruby Namdar was born and raised in Jerusalem to a family of Iranian-Jewish heritage. His first book, Haviv (2000), won the Israeli Ministry of Culture’s Award for Best First Publication. The Ruined House won the 2014 Sapir Prize—Israel’s most important literary award. He currently lives in New York City with his wife and two daughters, and teaches Jewish literature, focusing on biblical and Talmudic narrative.
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Reviews for The Ruined House
15 ratings2 reviews
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The book moves like a steady stream; you don't quite know what the destination is but you follow it anyway. Andrew Cohen, a well-off university professor with a life right out of an independent film, experiences a mental conflagration which conflates ancient Jewish history and the attacks of 9/11. Not much happens except his slow and steady deterioration followed by a rebuilding/renewal. It's a detailed character study, simple on the surface but with all kinds of things going on below.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Middle-aged academic Andrew Cohen has it all; his girlfriend is half his age, his academic reputations is great, he has flawless style. He and his ex get along; he has a good relationship with his daughters; his students love him; his girlfriend asks nothing of him. He’s got everything designed and choreographed. Everything he has is the best quality. No human frailty stirs the still surface of his life. Until it does. Little things start going wrong. He gets ill. He gets dirty. He develops a paunch. His girlfriend and ex both get cranky. The article he is writing just won’t gel, no matter how many tries he makes at it. He even takes delivery of a nine pound piece of tenderloin that looks like an uncircumcised penis and he sees as some albatross he can’t get rid of. He starts to have powerful visions that leave him shaken to the core. The surface of his life- and he’s all surface, he’s not real with anyone- is not just rippled but shattered. It’s a story about a midlife crisis. It’s also a story about academic life. But is it a story about mystical visions, as the sections between chapters (pseudo Talmudic pages) hint at (he is a Cohen, after all, and the visions have a priest possibly making a terrible mistake during a ritual), or is he having a nervous breakdown or even a psychotic break? Whatever it is, it takes a hard toll on him, and help is a long time coming. The isolation of modern people is another theme in the book. The writing is very nice, but the book is slow going. I really couldn’t work up much care for Andrew, although I did find myself compelled to keep reading to find out what the devil was happening to him. The other characters have no depth to them at all; we never see them except in relation to Andrew. It’s like they just stop existing when not in contact with him. It’s an odd book; I didn’t particularly enjoy it while I was reading, but in the end I *did* feel it was good, as I think about it and tease bits of it out from the mass of prose. It’s grown on me. Four stars out of five.