Female Ruins isn't Geoff Nicholson being humorous, this is a straightforward novel in many ways about a young woman trying to understand her relationship with her father. Kelly, the young woman lives in rural Suffolk and drives a taxi. She works hard and seems to have a fairly dull life and a rocky relationship with her mum. Dexter, from the US, comes into her life and things get more complicated. Interspersed with this narrative are occasional chapters that are written as if they are articles by her father, a cult architecture writer who famously never built anything. Rather than breaking up the story, these articles add to it, either obtusely by referring to a type of building Kelly has been showing to Dexter or directly. I enjoyed the novel, although I found the ending somewhat unsatisfactory and I was unsure what the writer was trying to say at that point. ( )

This is the third Nicholson book I've read in a row. The first, What We Did on Our Holidays was one of the funniest books I've ever read. The second, the Food Chain, was quite funny and quite good. This last one, Female Ruins is neither funny (its not meant to be) and not very good either. Boring actually. The heroine is dull, the hero has no character or credibility and the story, well, what story, its just too slight to carry a book although a couple of the scenes were really well-written. Great cover though. ( )