Ruins Child

<p>Set in what may be the future, and centred on six women sharing a space in some sort of crumbling apartment tower, <em>Ruins, Child</em> is remarkable for its irresistible sweep, wit, and prickly splintered truth. Giada Scodellaro’s novel is like a precious old mirror: dropped, looking up at you, flashing light and bits of the undeniable. With the pulsating sway of its liquid mosaic narrative, the novel may recall Virginia Woolf’s <em>The Waves</em>, but is entirely its own animal: kaleidoscopic, pointedly disorienting in its looseness, and powered along by snatches of speech from its compelling ensemble cast, often vernacular, often overheard. It’s a book seemingly drawn from deep wells of Black American reality: Scodellaro’s female protagonists push back against authority in the very vivacity of their telling, setting afoot a freeing-up and a mysterious inversion of marginalization. A surreal musing, <em>Ruins, Child</em> uses the lens of urban infrastructure, social commentary, folklore, choreography and collective listening to create an ethnography of place and an ode to communal ruins.</p>