Pop Pick of the Week
I just finished Scott Smith's terrific new novel,
The Ruins, and if you like a good scare, you should snap it up. Back in 1993, Smith published
A Simple Plan, the story of three friends in a small-town who stumble across a crashed plane carrying $4.4 million in cash. When they decide not to tell anyone about the money, everything starts to go very wrong... (The book was turned into a gripping film starring Bill Paxon and Billy Bob Thornton.)
The Ruins is about a group of tourists in Mexico who go looking for a missing friend and a mysterious archeological dig. But when they stumble onto the ruins—and the remains of their friend—everything starts to go very wrong.
Smith is so good at this; he ratchets up the tension inexorably, he has a rich imagination, and he is merciless: The Ruins is absolutely one of the bloodiest, darkest books I've read in a long time. (This may be one reason why it seems to be unpopular with a good number of Amazon readers; "Made me feel physically ill for days afterward," one wrote, and I can see why.)
It also has a serious subtext. Like the recent (and incredibly bloody) horror film, "
Hostel," it's about the dangers of globalization, of ignorant American travelers wandering cluelessly around a foreign land as if the world were a great big theme park.
Some of the most interesting popular culture now being created is based upon that theme...which is is primarily a result of the Bush administration's cavalier attitude regarding American interventionism and the rest of the world. It's not that the world hasn't always had its secret dangers. (
Transylvania, anyone?) But they were more remote, and we were more cautious.... It took Dracula weeks to reach England's shores via boat; it takes the young tourists in The Ruins and Hostel a day to get wherever they want, convinced that their American passports and their American credit cards will protect them. They are wrong. And in that sense, both The Ruins and Hostel are cautionary tales....
