It’s taken me a minute to get around to actually writing this book review. I made the mistake(?) of reading The Ruins during the gap between Thanksgiving and Christmas, and it left me a little raw, lol. Not a great season for something this real and this bleak. Don’t get me wrong, though, this book was everything I’d hoped for from the many people who told me their own experience with reading it. As with my other book reviews, this article will be broken into two sections. The first will give my overall impressions on the book without diving too deep into spoiler territory, while the second section–fittingly subtitled the spoiler section–is where I will dive a little deeper into the story details. So, let’s get into it!
The Ruins, written by Scott Smith (also author of A Simple Plan), was originally published in July of 2006. The book was well-received by both critics and readers alike for it’s unflinching trudge through the reality of body horror in survival situations. The story follows a group of four young (20-something) friends–Eric and Stacy and Stacy’s roommate Amy and her boyfriend Jeff–from the U.S. who have taken a group vacation to the Yucatan Peninsula in Mexico where they meet and befriend a German and a group of Greek tourists of similar age. The German, Matias, tells the group that his brother, Heinrich, has left the resort with a female archeologist he had just met and has not returned. Heinrich had left Matias a crude map to show where they were going. Matias decides he needs to go find his brother and Jeff volunteers to go with him for a bit of adventure as the group was becoming bored and restless at the resort. The rest of the U.S. group decides to come along and, as they are preparing to leave the next morning, one of the Greeks who the group has been calling “Pablo” decides to join them at the last minute.
So, we have a group of six people striking out to find the brother in an extremely rural region of a country they are unfamiliar with. There is also the added complication that one member of their party, Pablo, cannot communicate with any of them because he only speaks his native language and none of the rest of them speak Greek. What follows is one of the most arduous and vivid stories of survival, interrelationships, and despair that I’ve read in a long time. This is a tough read, make no mistake.
There are three main themes I want to really talk about in general terms that I think this novel does an impressive job of forcing the reader to consider; cultural isolation and presumption, the fragility of self-image, and the horror of human survival instinct.
The theme of cultural isolation is pre-imminent throughout The Ruins, and it shows up in a wide host of different ways. There is the evident difference in the economic and human conditions between an artificial resort environment and the surrounding villages that you can find in any popular tropical, caribbean, or exotic destination. The Ruins also did a great job of showing the delineation between the outsiders (the tourists), the colonizers (the Mexican culture), and the 1st nation society (the Mayan people). It was interesting to see the group slowly but effectively move from the relative safety of a resort environment which was designed to insulate and control the guests experience of the community and the people all the way to a small rural Mayan village where they become frustrated they don’t speak Spanish (the language of their colonists). This issue becomes central to the conflict in the story, and does a fantastic job of adding to the hopelessness, fear, and confusion of our main group of characters. There is a small segment of the group’s experience and reaction to meeting a dog when they get to the Mayan village that I think acts as a perfect example of what I’m talking about here. I won’t share, but if you’ve read the story I’m confident you know exactly what I’m talking about.
The second theme is the one that I probably enjoyed the most through the story. Being written in the third person omniscient narrative style means we get to spend time within the psyche and emotions of each of our main characters, and Smith does a great job of delineating each character and breathing unique and compelling perspectives for each. The one very interesting, and in my estimation brilliant, limitation the author makes to this narrative strategy is to limit this intimacy of shared perspective between the reader and the characters to those characters that are able to communicate with one another. This makes Pablo an even more tragic character in the story as the author withholds from the reader any sense of understanding what he is going through and his human experience of pain and fear. The decision to manipulate the perspective of the reader in this way gives the story a very western “americanized” point-of-view–making those non-speaking characters slightly “less than.” Through this lens, Smith gives us a detailed and difficult experience of how people react to, and are changed by, the reality of their circumstances. As mentioned earlier, the four main U.S. characters are very unique in both their psychology and their capabilities. However, when things become more and more hopeless they all have their own journey to the realization of their situation–and ultimately to the seemingly unimaginable decisions they make. I’ll get more into this in the spoiler section, but suffice to say here that this is a very effective portrayal of how bad situations make people deal with our–many times–inaccurate and dangerous trust in our own abilities.
This leads to the other theme I wanted to hit on, and that’s regarding the trial of real survival and how it can reveal some deep and dark truths about ourselves and the people around us that we generally believe we can depend upon. Most people, at least in modern western society, will likely go their whole lives without having to really contemplate the boundaries of what they’d actually do in the pursuit of survival. We have these fantasy beliefs of how heroic we’d act in these situations, but none of us–if we were being really honest–have the first clue what our limits might be. My experience with reading The Ruins was a stark reminder of this fact, and the struggles and realizations the characters were forced to deal with were truly heartbreaking and uniquely human. The craft with which the group’s situation is composed and developed to raise the stakes along the way made me think of quick sand. The more the characters struggle for survival, the more desperate and hopeless their reality becomes. This is what–I would imagine having never been through it myself–a real survival situation would feel like. By the time a person realizes the gravity of their situation, it is usually tragically too late to make any real difference–and as they reconsider the decisions that got them there you can sense the regret about small decisions that had such an enormous impact on their current reality as well.
Let me just say that I liked this novel very much, but I don’t think I could ever honestly say that I “enjoyed it.” I’m glad I read it, and I’m probably going to read it again in the future. I will probably, however, choose to read this story with a great deal of respect and mental preparation before I step back into the clearing.
Spoiler Section
There are just a few things that I wanted to mention for those that have read The Ruins, or who just aren’t overly concerned with having the story spoiled. First is my absolute loathing and respect for the craft that Scott Smith demonstrated in the body horror depicted in this story. The moment the rope snaps and Pablo plummets into the darkness of the mine, Smith doesn’t let the reader rest or relax. Each character’s own experience with injuries, trauma, survival fear, and paranoia are well-detailed and heartbreaking to explore. There is no character that is spared a horrific and unique form of torture from the vines, the villagers, and their companions. It is a pressure chamber that is constantly building and building right to the very last character’s death.
That’s the other thing I think it’s important to mention. Yeah, all the characters die. This story is super bleak. However, it’s not just that each character dies…it’s that they die in such tragically mundane ways. Apart from Eric, whose death is probably the most cinematic/heroic, every other character’s death is just a matter of inevitability. I found this hugely effective in adding to the bleakness of the story. Smith doesn’t give his characters grandiose and cathartic ends that pay due respect to the suffering each character has endured. Nope, they just die in the most logical way possible as a product of the decisions each one has made (either for themself or for someone else). This makes the story feel much more real. I mean, outside the supernatural plant problem, these people are tragically under prepared and equipped to take on the challenges put before them. For me at least, that’s what makes this story stick with the reader long after they’ve finished the book. The denouement is also pretty haunting, with the other Greeks (“Juan” and “Don Quixote”) happily beginning the climb up the vine covered hill with the villagers slowly closing ranks behind them. WOOF!
I know all the characters were uniquely tragic, but for whatever reason the character of Jeff really resonated with me. His obsession with making the “right” decisions to save himself and his friends was easy for me (and most readers I’d imagine) to relate to. Most people seem to think that survival situations are a lot like high-stakes games of chess. If you can just think it through perfectly, you’ll survive! What this novel does really well is giving Jeff all the time he might need to think through the situation, and then letting the reality of consequences reveal to him that none of it really matters at all. Survival, or really life under any circumstance, is completely unmoved or concerned with the intention with which you make decisions. Jeff’s final death is a perfect picture of that, and I think there’s a kind of beauty in it.
The last thing I want to mention is the quality and relevance of Smith’s ability to create clear separation and suspicion between people of different cultures really worked for me. These characters are from very different backgrounds, even the four friends from the U.S. are seemingly unique in their back stories and perspectives. I find that to be one of the more compelling parts of the story overall. As I mentioned, I love the way the narrative perspective is manipulated to make the reader deal with their own potential prejudices and subconscious paranoia about people from other cultures. I also think that’s what makes The Ruins a great modern folk horror. It really is about a group of “outsiders” being forced to deal with customs and concerns that are completely foreign to them. The really impressive accomplishment here is that Smith is able to effectively structure a sort of folk horror “inception” experience within this story. So you have “outsiders” (a group of non-communicative Greeks), with “outsiders” (English speaking tourists), with “outsiders” (a large tourism industry resort), with “outsiders” (the Mexican colonial culture), with “outsiders” (the non-communicative Mayan villagers), dealing with an “outsider” (the mysterious vines). It’s a folk horror layer cake, and the more you read through each interaction the more deeply you feel the isolation that makes a great folk horror story.
If you’re into the things we’re doing here at The Wicked Wild, this should be a book you consider reading. It’s well-written and it will be something you’ll want to talk about with your like-minded friends. Just remember…if you take 4 liters of tequila into a bad survival situation, you might at some point start using it as an antiseptic for the many many horrible open wounds you and your friends will be dealing with. Just sayin’.