New Releases
Lesser Ruins by Mark Haber
From the author of Reinhardt’s Garden and Saint Sebastian’s Abyss comes a gripping new novel of obsession and reflection.
Description
Grieving the loss of his wife, a retired professor throws himself into his life’s work—a monumental book that reinterprets Michel de Montaigne, the father of the essay, for the modern world. But as he struggles to complete this grand project, he is constantly interrupted—by the ghosts of his past, the distractions of modern life, and his son’s relentless push to make an electronic dance album.
As the professor sifts through the clutter of his desk, his thoughts are a haze of caffeine-fueled contemplation. Memories of his time at a community college, an artists’ colony in the Berkshires, and his passions for coffee and Holocaust art spill onto the page. Among his musings, he recalls sculptors, poets, painters, and inventors—each seeking to escape mediocrity and their own demons.
Darkly humorous and absurd, Lesser Ruins is a poignant, spiraling meditation on ambition, grief, and the human quest for meaning through art.
Christopher Chilton –
Mark Haber’s new novel Lesser Ruins is about a Montaigne scholar struggling to complete his masterwork in a world of distractions: smartphones, good coffee, his son’s obsession with house music, the death of his wife. The stream-of-consciousness style seems like it ought to be a challenge, but it never is, because Haber moves from humor to pathos skillfully and quickly. It’s a profound meditation on grief and the need to make your mark on the world when you are able.