The Ruiners

by Ellena Savage

Pip's life is going nowhere. A twenty-nine-year-old server stuck in a dead-end job at a lobster shack in Melbourne, she discovers her long-absent father has died, leaving her both an orphan and fifty-thousand dollars richer. Pip's new boyfriend Sasha, a dashing young scholar of Balkan fiction, convinces her to spend the money on a house on a Greek island where he might write his research project in peace. A lover of love, Pip complies, and buys a decrepit doer-upper on the one economically distressed, environmentally ravaged island she can afford.

But instead of landing on a bohemian island idyll, the couple and their friend Viv -- who is himself seeking refuge from the disaster that his job at a poorly funded left-wing news site has become -- find themselves enmeshed in an environmental struggle with and against members of the local community that brings the mistakes of the past into sharp relief.

Genres: Fiction

Kindle Edition

Expected publication December 1, 2026

About the author

Ellena Savage is an Australian author and academic. She is the author of the chapbook Yellow City (The Atlas Review, 2019) and numerous essays, stories, and poems published in literary journals internationally. Ellena is the recipient of several grants and fellowships, including most recently the Marten Bequest Travelling Scholarship 2019–2021. She lives in Athens, Greece, with her husband, Dominic Amerena.

Reviews

[Rebecca · Rating 4 out of 5]

“We inherit the world already burning and call it adulthood.”

The Ruiners feels like stepping into a dreamy coastal escape only to realise everyone there is quietly unraveling under the weight of grief, desire, and the looming collapse of the world around them.

Pip is messy, drifting, grieving, and deeply unsure of what her life is meant to become after the death of her estranged father leaves her with an inheritance and even more questions. Enter Sasha, charming, intellectual, slightly pretentious in the way all literary men named Sasha probably should be. Together they flee Melbourne for the fantasy of reinvention on a crumbling Greek island, only to discover that paradise comes with mould, environmental collapse, inherited guilt, and the creeping feeling that maybe you can’t outrun yourself after all.

As a huge fan of the authors essay collection, Blueberries, I went into The Ruiners with ridiculously high expectations and somehow Elena Savage still exceeded them. The prose is sharp, restless, intimate, and quietly devastating in places. One minute you’re reading about desire and dead end jobs, the next you’re spiralling into reflections on capitalism, climate grief, family inheritance, and the strange performance of becoming the kind of person you thought adulthood would make you.

What I loved most was how alive this book feels. Sweaty, salty, intelligent, slightly feral. It captures that terrifying period of your twenties where every decision feels both meaningless and life defining at the same time.

A literary page turner for people who like their fiction emotionally complicated, politically sharp, and just a little bit unhinged.

I Highly Recommend.

Thank you Simon & Schuster for my advanced readers copy.

Available Now!

[liv (≧▽≦) · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was so fun and perfectly encapsulates the chaos of being in your 20s. Euro-summer vibes paired with impulse, love, loneliness and being utterly lost in adulthood.

The book follows multiple perspectives, our main character Pip is completely lost as a waitress in Melbourne, before randomly inheriting some money from her absentee father. Around the same time, she meets Sasha, and we get a whirlwind 'romance' between the two. They marry and buy a decaying house on a small island in Greece, pack up their things and go. We also meet Pip and Sasha's friend Viv, who comes to stay with them for awhile who is equally as lost in his job as a journalist. All the characters are soooo in their head about everything, it makes the reading experience both ridiculous, frustrating and humanising all at once.

As one expects with impulse decisions, everything goes south, and the characters are left trying to put themselves back together both financially and emotionally. The backdrop of this book is so dreamy - similar vibes to Hot Milk by Deborah Levy, and the lobster crossover was a funny and great way to tie the start and end of the book together!