Excerpt from Blue Ruin by Hari Kunzru, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

Alice started down the stairs, then turned.

"If you're leaving in the morning, you're going to need me to open the gate. There's a code. I'll come by, I don't know, around 9:30, OK?"

"Sure."

She hesitated.

"So where did you go? Where have you been for all these years?"

I shrugged. "Traveling."

"Have you been making art?"

"I don't really make anything."

"Nor do I."

I stared at her, trying to gauge what she meant. The mask made it impossible.

"What do you do, Alice? I always assumed you'd be writing books, running a museum."

She laughed, a clipped little percussive sound. "I clean up Rob's messes."

She broke eye contact. She cuffed her wrist with the fingers of her other hand, rotated it a couple of times, then let it drop. The familiar sequence complete, she looked back up at me. "How about you?"

"I just do whatever the app tells me to."

It was meant to be a joke. The pause that followed was broken by the sound of her phone.

"Hello?"

I noted a slight tension in her voice. As she answered, she instinctively took a few paces down the stairs.

"Hey you. Oh, I'm just out for a run." She went a little further down. "I know it's dark. I just wanted to be out of the house."

So I was still a secret from Rob. I tried to ignore the little hit of satisfaction this gave me. I wanted to feel nothing, to remain unmoved. Instead, rusty emotional gears were beginning to turn, and I found myself setting out on a familiar elliptical orbit.

Alice's voice rose sharply in response to some question.

"My God, whatever you want there to be! Just look in the fridge, use your imagination."

Excerpted from Blue Ruin by Hari Kunzru. Copyright © 2024 by Hari Kunzru. Excerpted by permission of Knopf. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.