The Ruined House

Summary (from the publisher): Andrew P. Cohen, a professor of comparative culture at New York University, is at the zenith of his life. Adored by his classes, published in prestigious literary magazines, he is about to receive a coveted promotion—the crowning achievement of an envious 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 is 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 of 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.  

 

Review: I received an uncorrected proof copy of this novel from HarperCollins.

 

Middle-aged academic Andrew Cohen is living the dream. He is a respected professor at New York University drawing in on a desired promotion, he is on excellent and friendly terms with his ex-wife, is adored by his two children, and has a young and beautiful girlfriend. He is charming and handsome and throws lavish dinner parties in his perfectly manicured New York apartment. But Andrew's perfect life is slowly upended as he is visited by a series of visions involved an ancient religious ritual. Slowly, he is thrown headlong into an existential crisis that uproots his relationship, his career, the charmed exterior of both his own apartment and his body, and the collapse of the friendly relationship with his ex-wife. As he is forced to confront a religious side of his life that he has long ignored, Andrew questions all of his beliefs.  

 

I'm sure that for those well versed in Jewish symbolism, this book will read as a masterpiece. I personally lacked the knowledge or interest to probe deeply into the excerpts from the Talmud or religious significance of Andrew's breakdown other than to note the obvious significance of his sudden aversion to meat and sex outside marriage and his preoccupation with circumcised penises. Instead, this simply reads as the mid-life crisis of a self-absorbed professor. Andrew is dangerously hard to like, even in the beginning when he is supposedly flush with charisma and winsome attributes. He seems self-absorbed, only making time for anyone, including his children and girlfriend, when it suits him and brushing aside the cruel dissertation of his wife as something that just had to be done. As he collapsed into an incoherent mess in his empty apartment, I couldn't help but feel like his loneliness and self doubt served him right and might serve to improve him as a person.

 

In the last several hundred pages of this book, which seemed to drag on interminably, I just longed for the book to finish already. Even after writing it, it took me a week to summon up the interest to write this review. Although rich in religious significance, its characters are shallow and flat and the many pages fail to achieve a grand resolution or revelation other than Andrew's recovery as hopefully a wiser man.

 

Stars: 2