But in the second paragraph, it becomes clear that he is talking about a model land, village is too small a word for it. It wasn’t to be a big earthquake – I was thinking of two, maybe three hundred dead. I was about the start the earthquake when the phone rang. The novel begins with a corker of a first line or two: But, as you may imagine, they are closer to each other than they realise. The Ruins is a novel about identity, seen through the eyes of a pair of identical twins who, on the face of it, as have as un-identical minds and lives as can be imagined. Osman has previously written pieces for many publications, but The Ruins is his first novel. Mat Osman’s name may ring a bell with you – he does have a tall younger brother who’s big in TV called Richard – but his first claim to fame is as bassist of the band Suede, who were Britpop darlings in the 1990s, disbanding and reforming in 2010 to new critical acclaim. Slow Motion Ghosts at first glance is a police procedural about a dead rock star, but it had so much more in its dark, symbol-laden, music-steeped heart, which I was delighted to discover is also the case for The Ruins! Taylor Jenkins Reid’s Daisy Jones & The Six was one of them, but the novel that went on to be top of my best of pile last year was the first crime novel by cult author Jeff Noon. I am an absolute sucker for any novel with a bit of rock’n’roll in it, and two of my favourite reads from 2019 fitted that bill.
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