Author: Scott Smith
Translator: Moon-hee Nam
Publisher: Bichae
Hardcover | 538 pages | 216*144mm
| Important! Please read before you order! |
| >>>This book is written in Korean. |
About This Book
Stephen King ---
When I heard that Scott Smith was publishing a new novel this
summer, I felt the way I did when my kids came in an hour or two late
from their weekend dates: a combination of welcoming relief (thank God
you're back) mingled with exasperation and anger (where the hell have
you been?). Well, it's only a book, you say, and maybe that's true, but
Scott Smith is a singularly gifted writer, and it seems to me that the
twelve years between his debut--the cult smash A Simple Plan--and his
return this summer with The Ruins is cause for exasperation, if not
outright anger. Certainly Smith, who has been invisible save for his
Academy Award-nominated screenplay for the film version of A Simple
Plan, will have some 'splainin to do about how he spent his summer
vacation. Make that his last twelve summer vacations.
But enough. The new book is here, and the question devotees of A Simple
Plan will want answered is whether or not this book generates anything
like Plan's harrowing suspense. The answer is yes. The Ruins is going to
be America's literary shock-show this summer, doing for vacations in
Mexico what Jaws did for beach weekends on Long Island. Is it as
successful and fulfilling as a novel? The answer is not quite, but I can
live with that, because it's riskier. There will be reviews of this book
by critics who have little liking or understanding for popular fiction
who'll dismiss it as nothing but a short story that has been bloated to
novel length (I'm thinking of Michiko Kakutani, for instance, who
microwaved Smith's first book). These critics, who steadfastly grant pop
fiction no virtue but raw plot, will miss the dazzle of Smith's
technique; The Ruins is the equivalent of a triple axel that just misses
perfection because something's wrong with the final spin.
It's hard to say much about the book without giving away everything,
because the thing is as simple and deadly as a leg-hold trap concealed
in a drift of leaves
or, in this case, a mass of vines. You've got four
young American tourists--Eric, Jeff, Amy, and Stacy--in Cancun. They
make friends with a German named Mathias whose brother has gone off into
the jungle with some archeologists. These five, plus a cheerful Greek
with no English (but a plentiful supply of tequila), head up a jungle
trail to find Mathias's brother
the archaeologists
and the ruins.
Well, two out of three ain't bad, according to the old saying, and in
this case; what's waiting in the jungle isn't just bad, it's horrible.
Most of The Ruins's 300-plus pages is one long, screaming close-up of
that horror. There's no let-up, not so much as a chapter-break where you
can catch your breath. I felt that The Ruins did draw on a trifle, but I
found Scott Smith's refusal to look away heroic, just as I did in A
Simple Plan. It's the trappings of horror and suspense that will make
the book a best seller, but its claim to literature lies in its
unflinching naturalism. It's no Heart of Darkness, but at its
suffocating, terrifying, claustrophobic best, it made me think of Frank
Norris. Not a bad comparison, at that.
One only hopes Mr. Smith won't stay away so long next time.
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