What do You think about The Ruins Of California (2007)?
I'm not sure how I came about owning this book; it's not the sort I'd generally pick up. It must have been on sale somewhere; that's the only thing I can think. Since it's been gathering dust on my shelf for a while, and sitting dormant on my goodreads list, I figured it was time that I gave it a chance.I braved through it, but I wasn't impressed. The main character, Inez, a girl from a split home with her boho father in the N. coast of California, and her suburban mother in the S. coast, was not like-able. She wasn't unlikeable per se; she was just dull (certainly not "precocious" as the synopsis states). The type of teenager I'd meet in real life and be thoroughly unimpressed with. So it was tough to find interest in her plotless life (and there was no plot). The book seems meant to be some sort of character study, however the main characters seemed the most undeveloped. Some of the peripheral characters were more intriguing than the ones I had to follow.Overall, it was an easy book to get through, but I think it was helped by the fact that I'm CA born, so was always interested in the (clichéd) descriptions of the regions and their inhabitants. Somehow, by the end, I was drawn in enough to actually almost cry, but I can't quite explain how that came upon me, as the majority of the book was just so-so fr me.
—Kerri
So it's been a while since I've been on Goodreads so I actually finished this nearly a month ago. Anyway, my thoughts about this book? Meh. The writing was decent and I didn't hate any of the characters (Paul Ruin, actually, was a fairly well developed character) but did it make a big impression on me? No.I found myself wondering when the plot would begin, if there was a plot at all (the answer to that, dear friend, is no. There is no plot, really.), and if I would enjoy the book, which felt more like a psuedo memoir than a novel, better if I had grown up in Californian in the 1970s. Maybe it'd have felt more relevant, or the culture presented in the novel more understanable. But alas, I'm not gifted with a time machine and so I can only wonder, really. This isn't a book that I'm going to remember five years from now but it was a decent way to spend an evening.
—Bethanie
As with many of the readers below, I picked up this book at City Lights on a recent trip to San Francisco. I am not acutely familiar with California geography or what the culture was like there during the 1970's, but I still found this book to be a really pleasant departure from a lot of other things I've read lately. Martha Sherrill has crafted a really interesting familial story surrounding the Ruin family. While I was surprised to find that a lot of the action of this book occurs in description rather than dialogue, it kept my interest throughout. She is a lovely writer. I was, however, extremely disappointed in the ending, which felt hurried and not at all like the climax it should have been. I had expected to have a little more sense of why Inez, as the narrator, was recounting these particular years of her life, but I ultimately came up empty-handed. I would still recommend this book--particularly to those with even a modest familiarity of California geography. I think it'd be an excellent book club read as well to see what others feel they got from it.
—Emily
