Novel set in the South of France

11th October 2022

The Ruins by Phoebe Wynne, novel set in the South of France.

This is a hard novel to classify, it is part Gothic story, part coming-of-age and part mystery. The author includes a Note to her readers at the beginning, and at the end, in the Acknowledgements, she addresses her younger self. Much of the early story – the one set in 1985 – feels like a personal expression of difficult issues.

In 1985 the Ashbys are entertaining friends in their château, Château de Sète, in the South of France. They are just coming to the end of a few days of musical activity, crowned by a lavish party. Both young and old attend but festivities come to an abrupt halt when there is news of a road accident, a hit and run, caused by one of the party goers.

Ruby is the young daughter of the family and finds herself thrown together with other youngsters, not an altogether easy mix, but they soon bond and entertain themselves in the pool and go on social outings with the adults.

The adults, in whose charge they find themselves, are a self referring, and, for the most part, a distinctly unpleasant group of people. The men are generally entitled drunkards, who take pleasure in demeaning and controlling the the people around them, including the children, of course, who have no voice with which to defend themselves. The children are even beyond trying to alert the adult women in the group to their  increasingly terrible predicament at the hands of some of the men. No-one wants to know or acknowledge, and even if there are suspicions about the exact nature of some of the mens’ intentions, no-one is prepared to interrupt the partying.

The second storyline is set in 2010 and a Mrs Cosgrove has arrived in the area, determined to buy the crumbling and long abandoned Château de Sète, which is now on the market. We don’t at first know who the woman is but locals recognise her. Indeed there is another English buyer in town, who knows exactly who she is. She is certainly not an unfamiliar face.

In the earlier storyline there are further threads to enrich the narrative. Characters from Greek mythology are thrown into the mix, and an eerie parallel becomes only too apparent, Clytemnestra and Iphigenia featuring strongly.

As the story unfolds, young Ruby is reading Death on the Nile, which ends up symbolically blood spattered and torn …

This novel is very readable. The story set in 1985 had, to my mind, much more of a 1950s vibe about it; but of course, in order for the dual timeline narrative to work, it had to be that specific era. The storyline was at times a little slow, blurry even, but that blurriness also felt like an overlay, fudging memory, drawing the reader back in time. I wasn’t convinced by the ending, it maybe felt like a bit of a cop out and it took place with an alacrity that was in stark contrast to the mood of the rest of the novel.

The author says that Cotignac and Cassis were the inspiration for setting in the book and I read it whilst staying further along the Côte d’Azur (because reading books set in location is what we love to do!), which brought everything to brighter life, imagining the story unfolding just further down the coast. It is an interesting story, and I was keen to see how it evolved.

Tina for the TripFiction Team

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