This Novel Will RUIN My Sleep....

After haunting the shelves of MMLA bookstores
for the past six months searching for this book,

I found the only copy available at Powerbooks Megamall
this afternoon.

(insert evil cackle here)

Goodbye, my dibidis!!!

Guest Reviewer: 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.