Ruin

A little girl who disguises herself as an old man, an addict who collects dollhouse furniture, a crime reporter confronted by a talking dog, a painter trying to prove the non-existence of god, lovers in a penal colony who communicate through technical drawings—these are just a few of the characters who live among the ruins. Cara Hoffman’s stories are brutal, surreal, hilarious, and transgressive, celebrating the sharp beauty of outsiders and the endlessly creative ways humans muster psychic resistance under oppressive conditions. Both bracingly timely and eerily timeless in its examination of an American state in free fall, RUIN (April 5, 2022) is unsparing in its disregard for broken, ineffectual institutions while shining with compassion for the damaged left in their wake. The ultimate effect of these interconnected stories is one of invigoration and a sense of possibilities—hope for a new world extracted from the rubble of the old.