Blue Ruin by Hari Kunzru
I’m adding this to the growing list of books about artists coming out lately. Here, Jay’s previously promising career as an artist fresh out of his London art school program has sputtered into an existence of working without documentation in the U.S. While living out of his car, he delivers groceries to people in a wealthy area in New York during the pandemic. It’s during one of these delivery runs that he runs into someone from his art school days. When he first sees Alice, a former boo thing, on the enormous estate, he hopes she doesn’t recognize him. But she does, despite the dirty mask he’s wearing and the 20 years since she left him for his best friend and fellow artist, Rob. She invites him to isolate and recover from his sickness in their barn, and the time Jay spends there turns to time spent revisiting the past, and reconsidering what being an artist means.