Blue Ruin by Hari Kunzru

It’s the 1990’s, and Jay is an artist tipped for greatness. Shortly after graduating from his London art school, a promising career is already taking shape before him. Despite the brutal end of his intense relationship with Alice, his great love, he’s destined to make his mark on the world as one of the most brilliant young creatives of the last century. Everyone is going to remember his name.

It’s 2020, and Jay lives out of his car, working as a delivery driver in wealthy upstate New York. Sick and undocumented, Jay arrives at an enormous mansion and collapses from exhaustion — right at the feet of Alice, whom he had hoped he would never see again. Twenty years on, and while Jay teeters on the edge, she’s married the man she left him for; Jay’s former best friend and fellow artist, Rob. Ashamed, Jay hopes she won’t recognize him behind his dirty surgical mask, but when she does, she invites him to recover on the property, setting the stage for a devastating reckoning that’s been decades in the making.

Gripping and brilliantly orchestrated, Blue Ruin moves back and forth through time to deliver an extraordinary portrait of an artist as he reunites with his past and confronts the world he once loved and left behind. This is a novel suffused with tension and melancholy; an ode to an iconic art scene from an author at the height of his powers.