Female Ruins — Geoff Nicholson

“An elegantly constructed and often funny story about a man, a woman and . . . ‘the greatest modern English architect never to have built a building'” (The New York Times Book Review).
 
Geoff Nicholson's novel tells the story of Christopher Howell, a cult architect who allegedly built just one building, and the search for that fabled building―reputedly a wild, willful amalgam of styles ranging from eleventh-century Norman to twentieth-century Neutra. Ingeniously built into the narrative are bits of Howell's essays that celebrate the idea of the “Cardboard House” and the architecture of impermanence. When Howell's daughter -- and keeper of his flame -- Kelly, and a Howell groupie named Jack Dexter hook up in a free-falling love affair, the search for this apocryphal building becomes a search for a lost past. Brilliantly funny and seriously obsessive, Female Ruins shows how the castles we build are often symbols of our own needs, follies, and magnificent obsessions.
 
“A meditative tale of a physical and psychological homecoming that builds its quiet and riveting plot through the dreams, achievements and theories of a dead architect with a mysterious legacy. . . . Nicholson eschews the sarcastic bite of his earlier books (such as Whitbread-nominee Bleeding London), unraveling a complex, subtle story with equally intricate and modulated characters. This restraint, which artfully leads the reader to the poignant yet satisfying denouement, gives the novel special appeal.” -- Publishers Weekly
 
“With his two protagonists, Nicholson has created believably flawed human beings, and if they sometimes come off as mouthpieces for architectural theory, it is a forgivable sin in an otherwise enjoyable novel.” -- Booklist