It was long since I´ve read something by Hari Kunzru but Blue Ruin, the last from the so-called ´colour trilogy´ - which includes also White Tears ad Red Pill, none of them I´ve read so far - come just at the right time.
We are entering the story at the beginning of Covid, with details about the characters´ masks and their positioning shared from the first lines. Jay, a Black-British once promising rising star of the London art scene at the end of the 1990s, now an illegal food delivery driver, meets his big love Alice, 20 years after he disappearance with one of his art comrades, now her husband. Sick and weak, she invites him to temporarily stay in a cottage near the house where they were temporarily hosted during the pandemic.
Similarly like in the Decameron, also set during a pandemic, the characters - a gallerist with a penchant for guns and his girlfriend, always on her mobile - are random, although some of them were once part of the same art clique. and their interactions may took, towards the end of the story, absurd turns.
Jay´s musings about art - as an existential manifesto - are by far the most challenging and interesting intellectually. The questions that Jay following the train of thought about the artist being the art. The encounter between Jay and Alice, 20 years after is fortuitous but what about if it was part of a life happening project he authored?
I´ve felt at ease in the world of ideas and art-related and artists challenges. Jay´s backstory is very rich in events and ideas, and details about clashes between clase and race, but found the rest of the story - the present tense one - less tied together, as it has a life of its own, but written in a relatively different vein.
I am clearly curious about reading the other parts of the trilogy as well as other books by Kunzru, as both his writing and his repertoire of topics are very appealing for my current literary interests.
Rating: 4 stars
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