Beautiful Ruins
A Novel
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3.8 • 56 Ratings
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- $1.99
Publisher Description
“Why mince words? Beautiful Ruins is an absolute masterpiece.” — Richard Russo
The acclaimed, award-winning author of the national bestseller The Financial Lives of the Poets returns with his funniest, most romantic, and most purely enjoyable novel yet: the story of an almost-love affair that begins on the Italian coast in 1962 . . . and is rekindled in Hollywood fifty years later.
The story begins in 1962. On a rocky patch of the sun-drenched Italian coastline, a young innkeeper, deep in daydreams, looks out over the waters of the Ligurian Sea and spies an apparition: a tall, thin woman, a vision in white, approaching him on a boat. She is an American starlet, he soon learns, and she is dying.
And the story begins again today, half a world away, when an elderly Italian man shows up on a movie studio's back lot—searching for the mysterious woman he last saw at his hotel decades earlier.
What unfolds is a dazzling roller coaster of a novel, spanning fifty years and nearly as many lives. From the lavish set of Cleopatra to the shabby revelry of the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, Walter introduces us to the tangled lives of a dozen unforgettable characters: the starstruck Italian innkeeper and his long-lost love; the heroically preserved producer who once brought them together and his idealistic young assistant; the army veteran turned fledgling novelist and the rakish Richard Burton himself, whose appetites set the whole story in motion—along with the husbands and wives, lovers and dreamers, superstars and losers, who populate their world in the decades that follow. Gloriously inventive, constantly surprising, Beautiful Ruins is a story of flawed yet fascinating people, navigating the rocky shores of their lives while clinging to their improbable dreams.
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
Charming and unafraid of big, boisterous feelings, Jess Walter’s novel is about love and fame, and the lives built and demolished in the thwarted pursuits of them. Beautiful Ruins tells a vast story that moves across time, place, and genre—from the Ligurian coast to Rome during the filming of Cleopatra to Edinburgh and Idaho and present-day Hollywood. Walter takes his time teasing out the stories of his large cast of hazily romantic characters. We were hanging on every word as he propelled us through a half-century of dreams.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Edgar Award winning author Walter's well-constructed, bittersweet romance begins in April 1962, when a young innkeeper, Pasquale Tursi, puts up the "ethereal" American actress Dee Moray, who has arrived supposedly sick with stomach cancer at the remote Italian port of Vergogna. She has come from the extravagant Rome location of Cleopatra along with the philandering, tempestuous co-stars Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton (Walter's title is taken from a description of Burton at 54). Pasquale soon discovers that 20th Century Fox's chief troubleshooter, the young Michael Deane, has in fact whisked Dee, pregnant with the married Burton's child, away from the public eye to avoid scandal. Predictably, Pasquale falls in love with the beleaguered, vulnerable Dee, who is under pressure from Deane and the studio to get a discrete abortion in Switzerland. Fifty years later, the elderly Pasquale shows up on a Hollywood back lot looking for information about Dee's present whereabouts, much to the consternation of Deane, now a largely washed-up figure. The twisty narrative rolls on to show what actually became of Dee and her son, Pat Bender, a middle-aged, small-time performer. The Hollywood glitterati, led by the duplicitous Deane, come off looking thoroughly jaded and shallow compared to the stately, chivalrous Pasquale in Walter's (Citizen Vince) quirky and entertaining tale of greed, treachery, and love.
Customer Reviews
Anything that reminds me of cinque Terre makes me smile
Such a pleasant unobtrusive read, very nicely written, and takes you away and back to gentle reality very subtly and nicely
My New Favourite Book (of all time).
Too effusive?
I love female authors. I love historical fiction. I love Italy. And I love Italy.
When I started reading I thought, “This chick has got such a unique voice. Interesting. Almost dude-like.”
Surprise! And well done Mister Walter!
I lived inside this book with such joy, such anticipation, such longing, I never wanted it to end. And yet I simply could not stick to my self-imposed rationing. I was always gluttonous for more. God, I wish there could be a sequel.
I’ll probably just read the whole damn thing again.
Beautiful.
Fantastic
Fantastic summer read! Great story, beautifully told.