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The Ruins

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That said, there’s much enjoyment to be had here, as an escape into a version of London’s past that, while it may never quite have existed, offers plenty of theatrical pleasures.

It was slow going due to its depth and density. At times it was frustrating as I have a long list of books I need to read and tight deadlines. But it was not unsatisfactory, quite the contrary as in this day and age it's rather hard to find authors who really work to deliver a solid book to their readers.But I shouldn’t sulk. I can only recommend this book to anyone who, like me, is daydreaming about concerts, an exciting life, London and a beautiful story that makes you laugh out loud at times. An ideal Desert Island Disk Ful Stop And how did it feel when you started writing The Ruins having no experience other than songwriting ? Which is obviously a different thing.

The trajectory of Suede - hailed in infancy as both 'The Best New Band in Britain' and 'effete southern wankers' - is recalled with moving candour by its frontman Brett Anderson, whose vivid memoir swings seamlessly between the tender, witty, turbulent, euphoric and bittersweet. The author makes good use of the latest ways of communicating via the Internet, with episodes of trolling from Brandon along with SoundCloud and texts. I have to admit that a lot of this was quite alien to me and at times I felt that the story became a little too heavy.How did you get the concept itself and what was the start of the novel ? Doesn’t it feel like a solo-creativity ? In a creative sense. Adam Kussgarten is something of a recluse. He lives, alone in a flat, surrounded by his model of Umbrage. Umbrage is his life work, he's been working on it for over thirty years. It has taken over his flat and is precision built; it may not be a real world, but it's Adam's world. Anderson grew up in Hayward’s Heath on the grubby fringes of the Home Counties. As a teenager he clashed with his eccentric taxi-driving father (who would parade around their council house dressed as Lawrence of Arabia, air-conducting his favourite composers) and adored his beautiful, artistic mother. He brilliantly evokes the seventies, the suffocating discomfort of a very English kind of poverty and the burning need for escape that it breeds. Anderson charts the shabby romance of creativity as he travelled the tube in search of inspiration, fuelled by Marmite and nicotine, and Suede’s rise from rehearsals in bedrooms, squats and pubs. And he catalogues the intense relationships that make and break bands as well as the devastating loss of his mother. The Ruinsis an intriguing and beautifully-written tale of two brothers, filled with music and danger. But at its heart this is a novel about being restless and lonely; about how the inability to create something transient leads to a silent despair and the desire to be someone else.” Your debut novel “The Ruins” that came out this year tells a story of two brothers – two characters opposed to each other. There are lots of oppositions in the novel. Between Brandon and Adam, between their lives, values. Cities they live in – London and L.A. Between the old world and the new one. Mainstream and non-mainstream cultures. And, at the end it all gets to the conflict between East and Western cultures. Why have you decided to touch upon this problematic or was it kind of where the story drove you ?

A very dense novel covering quite a bit of themes: family, relationships, siblings, narcissism, the music industry in its magnificence but its dark side too and much more. I must admit the music bits were a bit of a blur for me, as I never studied music. But the story can be enjoyed regardless of one's music knowledge and obviously many of the artists are googleable :D Songs I think…I’ve never really written lyrics! I know Brett since I was 16. So we kind of worked that all the time. And he’s always been a lyricist. I think, it’s an incredibly hard thing! Quite difficult thing for non-singers to do. I was feeling quite strange about these bands like Manic Street Preachers where the singer doesn’t write the lyrics. I don’t know, it’s quite strange. It works with them. But I don’t think it would work with us. So basically, with first kind of 50 songs we wrote – we were basically doing something else. You almost have to do that! When people think about musicians practicing, they’re thinking about kind of scales. But what happens there – there’s a song that you love. And you kind of go: “I want to write something like that!”. One of the things about when you’re working – you have to have skills for it. You try and write a Kate Bush song. Or Bowie song. Obviously, you can’t! These people are genius! But you get to an interesting place. Which is almost what the style of musicians or the band is – reaching from one place and getting something interesting. The Ruins is the debut novel by Mat Osman. If you’re not a 90s indie kid like myself, you might not know that Mat Osman is the bassist of Suede. What I didn’t know is that he is also the brother of Richard Osman, TV presenter and author of the brilliant The Thursday Murder Club. I only discovered this when I watched an online Cheltenham Literature Festival event with both of them talking about their respective books – both debut novels, both published this year. They obviously share a strong bond, although they are so different in their personalities, interests and their looks. Fantastic debut novel. Magical, surreal, disturbing. Reminded me in places of early Iain Banks and DBC Pierre." - John NivenHis debut novel “The Ruins” seems to be like a “long way home”. Partially because following Mat’s words, he’s always been writing. And partially because within the novel itself, Mat reviewed different aspects of his life, creativity and personality. His novel is not typical in any sense. Osman masterfully opposed different worlds, cultures and values, creating a thrilling detective story. I was a bit in limbo to deduct a star for the phrase, "What's the only good Radiohead album?", but the book wasn’t a let down in any way. There were enough Bowie and other music references near that horrible horrible sentence to have my head spin round and distract me :) Brandon has also re-mortgaged their house, and soon, as Adam talks this through with Rae, it becomes clear to him that he needs to help Rae. The thing is, with the only people knowing that Brandon is dead being Rae, Adam, the police and the killers, Adam must become Brandon to see the schemes through. He’s also beginning to fall for Rae, and Robin doesn’t yet know his dad is dead. Things you did at that point sounds like the new beginning – in what way was it similar to the things you did at the beginning of your career, with debut Suede and in what way was it different ? It was strange. When I was in an office people felt sorry for me, so no one talked about it, but it was good to do – part of the book is about changing your life entirely at 45. Have you enjoyed success more second time around?

Richard and actress Ingrid Oliver have been married for almost a year ( Alan Chapman/Dave Benett/Getty Images) There is no doubt that Mat Osman has a incredibly creative imagination, and his writing is so well crafted. I'd probably have liked the story to be shorter, as I became easily distracted in places. Thedebut from Suede founding member and bassist Mat Osman is an altered state of a novel, mixingthecrime of LA noir,theambient cityscapes of JG Ballard and dark language games of Thomas Pynchon, all imbued with a sensitivity tothemagical – and powerful – properties of making and listening to music.”— George Chesterton, GQ Forget the tired rogues' gallery of lords and ladies, forget the tall ships and haywains. These images cut to the heart of England's psychic landscapes to portray an Albion unhinged, where magic and rebellion and destruction are the horses to which the country is hitched. On these fabled shores we are all castaways, whether our family has lived here for four thousand years or for four. As far as he knew Brandon was living in California and can’t understand what he was doing in London where apparently he’d been for a couple of weeks before his death. His brother’s girlfriend, Bea, enlists Adam’s help to discover what Brandon was involved in and who killed him.After the release of “Dog Man Star” you used to tour extensively – in Asia, in Scandinavia among others! And finally presented “Coming Up” which was not as lyrical as your debut works. And starting the tendencies you continued exploring with “Head Music”– what defined the direction you’ve been moving to, at that point – as songwriters and musician who were exploring these particular spaces ? Her faith makes her a fugitive, one of the outcasts of London, like those who form the revolutionary theatre troupe that lies at the centre of this novel. Shay falls for a young man called Nonesuch; “a name made of stone and glass”, Osman writes – a phrase with a nice ring but which, on second reading, made me wonder: why stone and glass? The danger with fine prose is that there can be more sound than substance, and occasionally Osman gets carried away with the power of his own voice. The novel as a whole is a picaresque romance, as Nonesuch and Shay put on their plays, elude their enemies and revel in or revile the textures of Elizabethan London. The flaw is that its hectic pace never really allows anything to settle, any character to take root. The Aviscultan belief system, for instance, doesn’t seem fully built into a cosmology that the reader can invest in. I like the idea of the Osman boys, Mat and Richard, in the humdrum English suburbs, each plotting his own clean getaway. With the benefit of hindsight, it all panned out perfectly. Mat loved 1970s glam and 80s indie, and went on to form one of the best bands of the 90s. Richard, three years younger, thrilled to prime time telly, pre-watershed fare, and would later find fame as the co-presenter of Pointless and the author of the bestselling Thursday Murder Club novels. The siblings set out from the same sitting room. They seem to have landed on different planets.

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