"Save as Many as You Ruin" is a short story written by Simon Van Booy. It was published in The Secret Lives of People in Love, the first short story collection that Van Booy published. These stories, set all over the Earth, all focus on the themes that Van Booy explores deeply in each of these short stories: love and loss, relationships and isolation in society.
Van Booy is a writer who attended school in England but now lives and writes in the United States. His short stories are highly acclaimed and have also won him many awards. Van Booy has written and published three collections of short stories: the first, The Secret Lives of People in Love, was published in 2007 and was shortlisted for the 2011 Vilcek Prize for Creative Promise. The second, Love Begins in Winter, was awarded the 2009 Frank O'Connor International Short Story Award. The third, Tales of Accidental Genius, was published in 2015.
"Save as Many as You Ruin" is a short story about a man named Gerard, who lives with his daughter in Manhattan. Gerard, a handsome man, hasn’t married and also hasn’t loved most of the women he has slept with. Not even the woman with whom he had his daughter Lucy. As the reader follows Gerard around New York City and watches him make difficult choices regarding love and relationships, we see the power of love at work in the world ridden with war and violence.
