28 June 2022
JULY 2022: BEFORE THE RUINS
This month, we’ve chosen Victoria Gosling’s suspenseful debut novel Before the Ruins for our Serpent’s Tail Book Club pick. This is a poignant and insightful book about lost love, the power of friendship and whether missed chances are really gone forever. Scroll down for more about this gripping novel, a Q&A from Victoria and to apply for a set of books for your book group.
Find more about the Serpent’s Tail Book Club and FAQs here.
ABOUT THE BOOK
One long, hot summer Andy and her friends begin a game that will take their whole lives to play out.
‘Engrossing, beguiling, and with an undertow of menace, Before the Ruins is a masterly debut from a richly talented author.’ Sarah Waters
‘Jaw-droppingly brilliant writing’ Marian Keyes
Andy believes that she has left her past far behind her. But when she gets a call from Peter’s mother to say he’s gone missing, she finds herself pulled into a search for answers.
Bored and restless after their final school exams, Andy, Peter, Em and Marcus broke into a ruined manor house nearby and quickly became friends with the boy living there. Blond, charming and on the run, David’s presence was as dangerous as it was exciting. The story of a diamond necklace, stolen from the house fifty years earlier and perhaps still lost somewhere in the grounds inspired the group to buy a replica and play at hiding it, hoping to turn up the real thing along the way. But the game grew to encompass decades of resentment, lies and a terrible betrayal.
Now, Andy’s search for Peter will unearth unimaginable secrets – and take her back to the people who still keep them.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Victoria Gosling grew up in Wiltshire and studied at Manchester University and the University of Amsterdam. She has lived in London, Australia, Brazil, the Czech Republic and Berlin. Victoria is the founder of The Reader Berlin and organises The Berlin Writing Prize. @victoriagosling
Listen to Victoria’s Before the Ruins playlist below:
Q&A WITH VICTORIA:
1. Your book is a coming-of-age story, a mystery and a thriller, with a touch of romance. Tell us about the process of writing across genres.
Initially, I was working on two separate ideas, or rather investigating two separate seams of material. One related to a group of teenagers playing a game at an abandoned manor house. The other seam was much more introspective. I had a sense of an older character, isolated, devoting herself to work and screens… then it became apparent that this character was an older version of Andy, one of the teenagers. I don’t plan novels so much as allow ideas to coalesce in my head and then try to make sense of the material.
I was passionate about reading as a child and I think I’m always trying to satisfy both that reader—who wants missing diamonds, unsolved mysteries, murders—and a reader who is more literary-minded, who wants a response to the world in which we find ourselves, to the business of living. Only later did I realise that as a result the novel wasn’t clearly one genre or another. I hoped publishers would find it fresh but worried it’d be turned down as difficult to market. Fortunately, Serpent’s Tail saw something in it. I love their list and couldn’t be happier that Before the Ruins found a home on it.
2. Is there anything readers have picked up on that you weren’t expecting?
I’ve had a couple of readers write to me saying they know where the diamonds are! Whether they were right or not, I cannot say…
3. Your writing has been compared to Agatha Christie, Tana French and Alan Hollinghurst. Who do you see as your writing influences?
As a child I did love Agatha Christie, particularly Crooked House. I also love Graham Greene for the compelling simplicity of his novels, and I read a lot of Joseph Conrad as a teenager.
Discover more of Victoria’s literary influences over at her Bookshop.org shelf:
READING GROUP QUESTIONS
- What were your first impressions of Andy and how do they compare to your impressions of her at the end of the book?
- Do you believe that the friends ever came into contact with the original diamonds?
- How does the title relate to the events of the novel? Does it have more than one possible meaning?
- Games and gameplaying are a recurring theme – can you describe some of the games that Andy and her friends play with each other apart from hiding the necklace?
- What did you initially think had happened to Peter and why?
- What is the importance of social media and surveillance technology in the novel? Is it different from the friends spying on one another in the Manor House?
- Andy hope desperately for what she calls ‘magic’ at various points in her life. Do you think she encounters it?
- During her meeting with Andy, Alice says ‘None of you seemed prone to telling the truth’. What is the biggest truth revealed in the novel? How does it change things?
- What role does social class or the friends’ perceptions of it play in Before the Ruins?
- How do you see Andy and David’s relationship evolving beyond the final pages?