Female Ruins – Geoff Nicholson

Female Ruins – Geoff Nicholson – 1999

Reviewed by: Faik Genç           Date: 20 August 2002

Geoff Nicholson is a great storyteller and he is one of the shining stars of new English Literature. He writes about the United States and the Americans, with same ease he does about Britain and the English. He is following in the footsteps of Martin Amis whose in-depth knowledge of the United States made him very famous on the other side of the Atlantic. Reading Geoff Nicholson is like sailing through the pages of an encyclopaedia, learning about the works of musicians, writers and in this case architects, of the past. Geoff Nicholson is a great investigator and usually writes his novels around his acquired deep knowledge and background work on the subject matter. His heroes (or heroine in this case) are mostly connected to some famous (or infamous) significant figure of the past. Nicholson, as he does in his other novels, alternates between her heroine’s witty story and the past writings of her late father. New fathers to new daughters like myself will find parts of this novel touching and self questioning, as Kelly tries to sort out her life while coming to terms with her father’s vaguely known exploits.

Synopsis

Kelly, the laid back daughter of an English architect with a cult following, who has never built a building. She earns her life as taxi driver in rural England. Her parents were divorced before her father’s death and she has been collecting information on her father’s achievements and writings since she knew herself. Her relationship with her mother is very similar to that of any daughter’s at that age but her approach to life is very different than that of any Englishwoman in her late twenties. Kelly essentially is a loner, with casual relationships and is generally not interested in men, that of course is except her dead father. Anybody getting close to Kelly’s private world would have to deal with her father first. Dexter is happy to do that. An enigmatic and limping thirty year old, and an unemployed son of a rich Californian, visiting unfashionable rural East Anglia. He hires Kelly and her cab for tours of the local sites. Kelly takes Dexter to the seaside attractions of East Anglia, local churches, eccentric gardens, the local power station etc. They end up in a push and pull relationship which involves endless cynical dialogues mostly going around Christopher Howell, Kelly’s late father, and his vision and his understanding of architecture, his affection for ruins, the places he liked and took his, then little, daughter Kelly. The novel is also a journey to Kelly’s inner world and with her we travel to the “Cardboard House”. We find out about her failure in life to impress and be impressed and her struggle not to end up as one of her father’s ruins. Female Ruins is a great book for the enthusiasts of contemporary English literature and is a must read for the fans of architecture.