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

I could see a meandering path leading off up into the trees. There was something perfect about the solitude, the greenish light filtering through the canopy of leaves. A held breath. I imagined walking uphill, subsiding into moss and forgetfulness. Instead, I closed the barn door and prepared to go back out on the road. I cleared out the trash that had accumulated in the car footwells. The interior smelled of sweat and snack foods, poorly masked by a pine tree air freshener. Even if it were vacuumed and steam cleaned, I'd never again be able to use it to pick up passengers; the grime of weeks of occupation would always lurk around the edges, in the window seals and the seat pockets, saturating the upholstery. Though the car was twenty years old, it was mechanically sound, worth the money I'd paid for it. I'd looked after it meticulously, so that even though it barely met the standards of the ride-hail companies, passengers didn't complain. My star rating had been good.

It's a fiction we seem to demand, that a person be substantially the same throughout their lives—human ships of Theseus, each part replaced, but in some essential way unchanging. We are less continuous than we pretend. There are jumps, punctuations, sudden reorganizations of selfhood. I'd always had goals, even if they weren't ones that other people could understand, but at some point I'd lost touch with the person who'd set them. If you had asked me what I was doing, delivering groceries in upstate New York, I would only have been able to give you a superficial answer.

Clearing out the car was tiring, and I went upstairs to rest. I drifted off to sleep and woke again to find that it was dark and a voice was calling my name.

"Jay? Are you OK?"

I sat up groggily and fished around for a mask.

"Yeah. I'm fine."

"Can I come up?"

"Just a moment."

She climbed the stairs. She was dressed in athletic gear, leggings and a long-sleeved top, her hair tied back in a ponytail under a cap. Her mask was the same dusty orange as her shoes. Looking at this precisely matched outfit, I wondered again who this woman was, who she had become. When we were together, her primary form of exercise had been walking to the shop.

For a while we exchanged awkward small talk, like people who'd met at a boring party and were making the best of it. I told her I was getting ready to leave, that I needed to get back to my job. She said I didn't seem healthy enough to work.

"This can't be the first time this has happened to a driver. Call them up, sort it out with them."

"It's an automated system."

"So? There must be people."

It was hard to explain to her. She was a rich person, used to interactions in which she was respected, even courted. On the rare occasion when her status wasn't recognized—by some official or service provider—it was, I imagined, a memorable outrage. She'd find it hard to understand that I had no relationship with the company outside terms set by the app. It was designed that way. Even if you stayed on the phone for hours and finally got to speak to someone in a faraway call center, they had no agency. You could never appeal to anyone's humanity.

"Is someone waiting for you?"

I hesitated, confused by the change in direction. "No."

"Well then."

"It's not that simple."

"I just don't see why you're leaving. If you're anxious about money, we can work something out." She stood up. She seemed irritated.

When I first met Alice, I wanted to devour her. I wanted to exhaust her and exhaust myself, wear us both out until there was nothing left. I understood, in a confused way, that what you can see of other people, what they let you see, is only the part of the iceberg that's visible above the water. When I was young I thought of that as a challenge, a mystery to be explored. I would reflexively try to "get to know" everyone I met. Gradually, the purpose of this deep-sea diving began to seem less obvious. What is the point of knowing people, really? What does it achieve? We try and touch each other, but it is impossible.

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.