Beautiful Ruins

"Life is a blatant act of imagination." Brilliant and fascinating story bridging "recently," or at least a digital era and the past of 1962-post-war Italy. In the present, Claire Silver is a production assistant to legendary, but washed-up producer Michael Deane who has descended into the tripe of reality shows. Claire longs for the golden age of film and to make something worthwhile and meaningful. She is on the cusp of change - maybe a new job? maybe losing the old boyfriend? and leaves things up to Fate on a Wild Pitch Friday when 2 random figures show up at her studio office, late in the day. Both have cards from Deane, which gives them a chance to pitch a story: Shane Wheeler has a screen play about the Donner Party, and Pasquale show more Tursi has a 50 year old story and the need to find an American actress he met at his family resort in Italy in 1962. Luckily, Shane translates Italian and the group is off on an adventure to find Dee Moray who was supposed to star in Cleopatra with Richard Burton and Liz Taylor, but due to illness (which turns out to be pregnancy by Burton) ends up at Pasquale's door. "Pasquale entertained the unwieldy thought that he'd somehow summoned her, that after years of living in this place, after months of grief and loneliness and waiting for Americans, he'd created this woman from old bits of cinema and books, from the lost artifacts and ruins of his dreams, from his epic, enduring solitude. (13) Weaving these two threads back and forth is tricky, but deftly handled by the author with humor and reflection. Past Pasquale is a dreamer, trying to transform the resort he inherited (The Hotel Adequate View) from his dead father and runs with his depressed mother and "witchy" Aunt into something that will attract American tourists. He envisions a beach (man-made) and a tennis court built into the rocky cliffs. Nothing about the geography or the tiny village (nicknamed Whore's Crack) is conducive to this. First a drunk, dejected, war-torn American writer, Alvis Bender shows up at the resort year after year to try to write a novel and make sense of his role in WWII in Italy. Then beautiful Dee Moray shows up and makes Pasquale believe anything is possible. The two develop a friendship, which could potentially become more, but so many complicating factors make this almost impossible: Pasquale has fathered a child in Florence, though the mother will not allow him to accept responsibility. Dee is pregnant by Burton, has to decide between abortion (Switzerland) or having the child and giving up her career, not to mention keeping her mouth shut about the father, Pasquale has his mother and aunt to look after and a business to run. These circumstances and tension are slowly drawn out through the book, alternating with searching for Dee in the present, who now goes by Debra Moore. Enter one more strand to make this a stable story: Pat Moore, Debra's ne-er-do-well son, who fights the demons of addiction while trying to make a career for himself in music. His hapless adventures and his fraught relationship with Debra add more drama and another wrinkle to the whole mess. All of these folks and few more converge in a community theatre in ID where the Deane party witnesses the performance of their lives, acted by Pat and directed by Debra. It is truly life-changing for all those involved and the story settles itself into a satisfactory ending with each person getting what they want/deserve in the end. It all comes down to the advice of Pasquale's mother when he was young: "the smaller the space between your desire and what is right, the happier you will be." (304) I loved how time, place, chance all played into a singular story that was so indicative of life and its disappointments, discoveries and surprises. Top-notch! show less

Book on CD performed by Edoardo Ballerini

On a sunny day in 1962, a young hotel owner, Pasquale, spies a boat approaching his small Italian village. Aboard is a beautiful, young, American actress, Dee, and Pasquale is instantly smitten. Fast forward to the present day, and a Hollywood producer’s assistant is hearing “pitches” on the studio’s back lot, when an elderly Italian gentleman approaches looking for Michael Deane. He’s hoping Deane can help him find Dee.

What a delightful story! Moving back and forth in time, and with multiple styles and points of view, Walter has crafted a love story with wide appeal. The twists and turns in the story stretched the bounds of credulity, but I didn’t care. I was engaged and entertained show more from page one, and was so sorry to see it end.

Edoardo Ballerini was simply marvelous performing the audio version. I loved the way he voiced Pasquale, Dee, Michael Deane and the many supporting cast members – including Richard Burton, Aunt Valeria, and a host of fishermen. show less

This book had a major deficit to make up: first because of the "spinster librarian" comment, second because of the GPS/MapQuest situation, and finally because the author does a half-hearted job at expressing the two female leads' points of view. Details? Will do.

The spinster librarian comment is so lame that I actually put my book down in disgust; I couldn't stand to look at it for awhile. This idea of spinsterhood is an affront because it calls up the dark days when a woman's happiness and success in life were thought to be directly related to her marital status. Men defining women. Calling up this dusty old cliche outs the author as completely out of touch with the female experience, and modern American society in general.

This show more cluelessness about the modern female experience was on ample display when the story was told from Claire's or Dee's perspectives. They are completely at the mercy of the whims of the men they encounter, with minimal care given to fleshing out their thoughts or motivations. Or maybe there was an adequate amount of fleshing out, but the author was more intent on how their thoughts and motivations would impact the men and further the plot, rather than making these women believable in their own right.

The business about getting lost driving in LA because the character didn't get the GPS option for his rental car was absurd - every middle class American between 12 and 70 years old has a smartphone with mapping capabilities. This was true when the book was first published (2012), and the fact that it was used as a plot device made me embarrassed for the author. He really couldn't think of another way to get the character to call his ex-wife? And when he does call the ex, he asks her to go on MapQuest for directions! MAPQUEST?! Is that even still around? (I checked and it still exists; who knew?) Clearly the author started this book back in 2001 and forgot to update this little episode to reflect this decade's technology.

I feel better getting all that off my chest. And with all that being said, the book did manage to hook me. I really love books that layer characters' lives over the tops of each other, showing how each comes to the intersection and where they go after and all jumbled in time so the future reveals the past reveals the future reveals the now. It feels so true, truer than true - like a more true version of real life. I can't get enough. I especially love epilogues (or in this case, epilogue-like sections) that wrap it all up and summarize how each person's life spins out and ends. Not necessarily death, but just the place where their stories comfortably rest. It almost always leaves me feeling happily wistful. show less

Jess Walter’s Beautiful Ruins is spellbinding.

Readers searching for something to sweep them up and out to sea need look no further than the author’s latest, and I can promise you the plot is every bit as delicious and enticing as the lush cover photo suggests.

Fluctuating between the making of the Liz Taylor and Richard Burton classic “Cleopatra” in Italy and present-day Los Angeles, Walter introduces a cast of unforgettable characters. Though I was innately more interested in the scenes from 1962 than the modern plot, both were crucial to Walter’s story of love lost and found — and honor redeemed. Pasquale is a hopelessly endearing character — someone you want to hug and help. Naive, lovely actress Dee entrances him show more immediately, but it’s hard to tell if it’s Dee that effortlessly captures his heart . . . or the idea of what she could finally bring to his colorless life.

You know how sometimes you’re reading, grow bored and just skim a bunch of paragraphs . . . only to realize you’ve missed absolutely nothing? I hate that. And Beautiful Ruins is the opposite of that reading experience. It’s a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it masterpiece of many intricate stories, and the setting made me feel like I could step in and share a glass of wine with the motley Italian crew. Even Michael Deane, a selfish buffoon who royally screws up others’ lives, manages to somehow seem likeable.

The book’s story-within-a-story quality completely sucked me in, too. Beyond the fate of the principle characters, we’re given the movie treatment of a heartwarming tale of . . . cannibalism. (Yes: cannibalism.) And somehow it still sounded like a moving, captivating film I might want to see. Honestly.

Readers craving a vibrant story offering glimpses at old Hollywood, the Italian seaside, the effects of war on the innocent and the bonds (and sacrifices) of love need only grab Beautiful Ruins. It’s one of the best books I’ve read this year and one that certainly deserves a spot in your bookcase. show less

Delightful. Beneath the frothy, steamed-milk, surface of this novel broods a dark Italian espresso of love and regret and more love. Of course love leads to complications, not least of which are the children of passion, excised, hidden, shunned, or, accepted, nurtured, and acknowledged. Between Florence, Rome, and an isolated port along the Italian Riviera, a complicated tangle of parallel plots develop in 1962 during the chaotic filming of the Richard Burton / Liz Taylor spectacular, Cleopatra. The choices made by each character in this fulcrum of decision – the naïve but fruitful neophyte actress, Dee Moray; the failed novelist, Alvis Bender; the sombre yet hopeful minor hotelier, Pasquale Tursi – create ripples spreading through show more the years, coming ashore again more than forty years later.

Jess Walter is masterful in his delicately comic prose, which, even when bounding through a zany scene, holds deep veins of poignancy and honesty. Time after time, I found myself marvelling at Walter’s touch: entirely impressive, without calling attention to itself. Even when he undertakes chapters in alternate modes – there is a short story chapter, a movie pitch chapter, a self-important autobiography from an unsavoury Hollywood producer, a play (all of these ostensibly with different “authors”) – Walter perfectly integrates these modes into the story as a whole; this is never mere display and technical bravura. Moreover, Beautiful Ruins is as singular in its writing as Walter’s previous two novels, The Zero and The Financial Lives of the Poets. When each new work raises the bar of respect for an author, you can only hope his career flourishes long into the future.

Perhaps our lives, and the stories of our lives, cannot hope to amount to more in the end than beautiful ruins. If so, then we could do worse than hope for a bit of Jess Walter’s humane insight into the wonderful process of our ruination. Highly recommended. show less

I'm not sure I would call this a Book of the Year (a designation I tend to associate with deep characters, cohesive themes, and layers of meaning), but it's certainly an entertaining read. The characters are enjoyably eccentric, the storytelling is brisk and imaginative, the scenery is evocative, the old Hollywood patina is engagingly nostalgic, and the whole thing is narrated with a sharp but ultimately generous wit.

If there is a central theme, it's that everyone, at some time in their lives, faces a fork in the road of their fate, a moment when they have the choice to continue the way they have been travelling or seek out the path that will transport them to a different destiny. (Not the most profound insight, but true for all that.) show more This is certainly the case for the novel's heroine, beautiful 1950s starlet Debra who finds herself exiled in a decidedly unromantic Italian coastal town due to the manipulations of an evil producer. Will the experience break her or be her salvation? It's also true of the Italian lad Pasquale who, bedazzled by her beauty, must decide whether to pursue her or honor his responsibilities. It's true of Claire, a modern-day production assistant who must decide whether to continue to endure the soul-killing inanity of the film entertainment business or accept a job offer that will provide respectability but no more joyous fantasy. And it's most certainly true of Pat, Debra's son, who faces the hard choice of giving in to sulky resentment or pulling himself back from the brink of drug abuse to assume a new life as beloved husband and son.

The books moves between events of the 1940s and today with uncomplicated ease, the vintage bits related to the filming of Cecil B DeMille's epic "Cleopatra" in Italy (Richard Burton appears in several memorable cameos), the modern bits related to the waning career of Michael Deane, a Hollywood producer with unapologetically Machiavellian tactics (and morals).

I enjoyed the book's sarcastic wit, which Walter aims at such worthy (albeit obvious) targets as movies (hot-rodding zombies!), reality TV ("Rich MILF/Poor MILF - I love it!"), Scientology, Hollywood politics, film festivals, and romantically self-destructive writers/actors. Not for nothing, Walter's tale includes what may be the most horrifyingly funny script idea since "Springtime for Hilter." (Hint: it's called "Donner!")

But I also enjoyed the book's heart: Debra's unresentful perseverance, Pat's redemption, Pasquale's gentle but steadfast sense of honor.

You'll laugh! You'll cry! But first you'll have to buy a ticket to enjoy this engaging tale that reminds us that even from the ruins of shattered dreams, beauty and dignity may yet arise. show less

Beautiful Ruins - Jess Walter
audio performance by Edoardo Ballerini

4stars

That was then, this is now; but it’s all much the same; the lives of the rich, famous and the wannabes. What is art? Let’s make a deal.

The book alternates time lines from Italy, in 1962 during the filming of Cleopatra, to destination Hollywood in the present century. There are detours to the UK, Seattle, and small town USA, as the story brings together a diverse set of characters. There were lots of characters that I didn’t like in this book and only one that had any appeal at all, Pasquale. Pasquale made the book for me. Pasquale, and the book’s conclusion, and the sharp-edged, blood letting descriptions of each and every character. Scummy or show more ineffectual, depressed or narcissistic, Jess Walters nails it with every character.

I suppose that the aging producer with his female assistant and the wannabe writer were meant to be exaggerations of type, caricatures of the entertainment business. But, I’ve lived and worked a freeway’s hop from Hollywood for over 30 years. I’ve taught child actors and the children of actors. I’ve worked with film school grads and musicians with teaching credentials. For most of these people the entertainment industry is just that. It’s a job that can provide a living, and with luck, creative satisfaction. But I’ve also met the people who populated this book; the ones who live their lives as if they were caricatures of themselves. I didn’t like them, but I have met them. I’m surprised that I liked a book that was all about them.

I liked it because Walters does more than paint a satirically damning picture of the entertainment biz. While he is diagramming failed success stories and successful failures, he has a lot to say about life and art.

“All we have is the story we tell. Everything we do, every decision we make, our strength, weakness, motivation, history, and character-what we believe-none of it is real; it's all part of the story we tell. But here's the thing: it's our goddamned story!”

“...he was part of a ruined generation of young men coddled by their parents--by their mothers especially--raised on unearned self-esteem, in a bubble of overaffection, in a sad incubator of phony achievement.”

“To pitch here is to live. People pitch their kids into good schools, pitch offers on houses they can’t afford, and when they’re caught in the arms of the wrong person, pitch unlikely explanations. Hospitals pitch birthing centers, daycares pitch love, high schools pitch success . . . car dealerships pitch luxury, counselors self-esteem, masseuses happy endings, cemeteries eternal rest . . . It’s endless, the pitching—endless, exhilarating, soul-sucking, and as unrelenting as death. As ordinary as morning sprinklers.”


I didn’t like his characters, but I loved his writing. show less