Geoff Nicholson's latest book is a fun read that doesn't amount to too much. And while the protaganist is likable and nicely drawn, there is little movement or development in her character.

In general Nicholson is a cultural critic, a sort of poor man's Roland Barthes. And his observations about architecture in "Female Ruins," are funny and astute. One gets the feeling, after reading a lot of Nicholson, that this is the reason he writes novels. He wants to talk about some subject that is obsessing him. Whether it be the electric guitar, VW bugs, foot fetishism, or the city of London, it's always some external subject that drives the story. Sometimes this is successful (Hunters and Gatherers, Bleeding London, Everything and More) and sometimes this drive to explain and expose the facts gets in the way (Flesh Guitar).

Here we have a story that carries the reader through, but doesn't ultimately satisfy. Female Ruins won't bore you, it's a nice ride, but when you close the book you'll be finished with it.

Female Ruins is a forgettable book.

I am so addicted to Mr. Nicholson! I own pretty much everything he's written, except for a few out of print pieces I'm still searching for. This new piece has his signature style of taking something common and twisting your perspective so that you see things in ways you never could in everyday life and you become just as intertwined with the subject as the characters are...

This book deals with the world of architecture (not the typical art history terminology and styles I memorized in college) and what it says about our human condition, especially about the coincidence and sometimes wimsy of it all.

I found myself completely thrust into the world of the characters and even though things seemed a bit predictable, the way things are revealed through Mr. Nicholson's twisted and descriptive language kept me completely inthralled and waiting to see what happens next.

If you liked his other books, this is a definite must-read. If you've never read anything before, try the Food Chain, Hunters & Gatherers or Bleeding London first and then go for this one.

As a fan of Nicholson, hands down, this is the weakest of his work. It's a surreal story set in a post-modern guitar rock fantasy world that goes nowhere. (Was he experimenting with a new style?) After all the brilliant plots, characters, and dialogue; this was a huge letdown.

This is indeed Nicholson's weakest book. A series of vignettes and anecdotes that taken individually would be fun, are presented in the place of a traditional narrative or even an overt message. These tales of the flesh guitar simply don't add up to much.

Definitely the weakest of the three Nicholson books I've read (the other two being Bleeding London and Still Life With Volkswagen), this novel haphazardly follows the career of Jenny Slade, an avant-garde female guitar player. Other readers have criticized it's lack of narrative framework or traditional plot, but I think it adheres fairly closely to the traditional "quest for knowledge" structure. The problem is that the various incidents and episodes fail to add up to the larger knowledge or truth that is implicit in such a structure.

Over the course of the book, Jenny appears as a vision and converses with various guitar gods right before they die, including Robert Johnson, Jimi Hendrix, and Kurt Cobain, and also dispenses advice to a young Frank Zappa. Intermingled are her encounters with fictional musicians, the most captivating of which is the one-armed Freddie Terrano and his band of worshipers. Intermingled are excerpts from the "Journal of Sladean Studies", an uber-fanzine written by her favorite fan. Ultimately, it's a surreal hodgepodge that is intermittently entertaining, but kind of meanders to nowhere. In that sense, I think Nicholson is rather like Jonathan Lethem, who is also capable of great writing and wild ideas, some of which are genius, and some of which flop. For Nicholson, this is a flop.

This is not a book about Flynn - but a sleazy novel using Flynn's name-not for flynn fans