Female Ruins (Magill’s Literary Annual 1991-2005)
At a glance:
- Author: Geoff Nicholson
- First Published: 2000
- Type of Work: Novel
- Time of Work: The present
- Setting: Suffolk, England, and Southern California
- Principal Characters: Christopher Howell, Kelly, Jack Dexter
- Genres: Long fiction
- Subjects: Parents and children, Twentieth century, California, Fathers, Architecture or architects, England
- Locales: California, Suffolk, England
Geoff Nicholson’s thirteenth novel, Female Ruins, follows the relationship between Kelly Howell, an English taxi driver in her late twenties, and Jack Dexter, an American slightly older than she and an admirer of her father’s writings about architecture.
When Kelly was thirteen, the cast of a giant hand of a statue of the Roman emperor Constantine fell on her father as he was installing an exhibit of architectural fragments. Christopher Howell’s death and his views on architecture move Kelly to regard life as a string of failures. Having wasted her teens on...
[The entire page is 2392 words long]
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