Beautiful Ruins: A Novel

Imagine, if you will, how a jigsaw puzzle is made: an image is captured (generally a photo), enlarged, then run through an automated, computerized slicer to create hundreds of little pieces. The puzzle enthusiast then takes the time to put them all together based on various color and shape clues. The finished product is nice - art in a simple form.But now think about creating the same beautiful finished product but NOT by starting with the whole and using technology to reduce it to pieces, but rather starting by individually creating all the intricate and perfectly crafted pieces one at at time so that by the time you are done and everything is then nicely fitted together, the final view would be much more than simple art, but it would be a masterpiece born out of creative vision, brilliance and skill.Such is the work of Jess Walter in Beautiful Ruins.Having read several of Jess' books now, Beautiful Ruins is, in my opinion, his best yet. My top three are uniquely different in many ways: Citizen Vince (rapid-fire page turner), The Financial Lives of Poets (engaging and hilarious), and Beautiful Ruins (profound, emotionally complex, magnum opus craftsmanship). Whereas I would generally consider other Walter books (particularly those mentioned) to be "manly books" --especially in themes, characters and humor-- Beautiful Ruins plumbs soulish issues that transcend gender. Additionally, the female characters in this book are richly and thoroughly developed, thus capturing the female psyche in a way that I don't think Jess has done in the past. It is one thing for a man to think like a man, but it is a completely different thing for a male author to capture believable, compelling and authentic female thoughts. Bravo, Jess...the sign of a great author.There are a good number of characters in the book about which some reviews have found fault with the task of keeping tract of them. Not so with me. What is remarkable about the different unique characters in Beautiful Ruins, is that so many of them are so completely developed and intriguing in different ways: Pasquale, Dee, Claire, Michael, Pat, Shane, Alvis, on on down the list. And Richard Burton, for heaven's sake! What a brilliant fictional portrayal of a legend - carefully researched, of course, thus capturing the historical essence of his life, including virtue and (a lot of) vice. Even the many minor characters were spot-on in their unique roles and appearances.Walter plumbs the depth of emotions in ways he has not explored in previous works. Taking on the theme of love must stir fear in the heart of a serious author. After all, no subject has been written about so expansively or has produced so much saccharine, cheesy, and predictable books as this. And yet...Walter deals with such a complex subject with an equally complex writing style - complete with parallel stories, tragic relationships, and vignettes of pseudo-love, familial love, reckless love, and fearful love.As always, Jess Walter's humor is clever and carefully honed in both voice and timing. In predictable fashion, it sometimes leans toward the crude (probably to a fault), but the man can find your funny bone. He is a master of the parenthetical statement, and uses the device liberally in this book.There are a handful of books in my collection that I have read once to get the story down, and then have read them again to truly study them (Hugo's Les Miserables, Salinger's Franny & Zooey, Steinbeck's East of Eden, Ivan Doig's Dancing at the RascalFair)...Beautiful Ruins will be another one of these books. I am convinced that the overall depth of meaning, creativity in parallel plot lines, brilliance in the stories within the story (Shane's movie pitch, Alvis's book, Pat's song, Lydia's play, etc.) is far beyond what I have yet comprehended. Honestly, there is more meat here than one reading can capture.I suppose that in one sense, this book is not for every reader. Because it is a book about introspection, written as the result of introspection, and thus demanding introspection, this is a tall order for a lot of readers. Some folks just don't want to do the heavy lifting to go there. And worse yet, they will be very uncomfortable with what they see if they take the time to go deep.Well done, Jess. Keep 'em coming.

Toward the end of Beautiful Ruins, I was almost expecting to hear “Cut! Scene do over,” or “Action!” and it would turn out the story was just a movie.In some respects, it would have made perfect sense. It had a beautiful American actress, a future producer, begins while the movie Cleopatra, starring Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton, is being filmed in Italy. Then, it makes a 50-year jump to a journey toward an unexpected reunion. It’s a good thing Burton isn’t still around, because he might have had a case for slander. You can imagine the scenes on the silver screen. For now, it is just a book.Cue some Italian music. It is 1962. As 21-year old Pasquale Tursi works on the beach of his remote Italian island Porto Vergogna, the hiccup between more glamorous coastal villages. He has inherited the inn his father ran, which has very few customers, but he dreams that a tennis court built into the cliffs will be the attraction it needs. His mother is still in mourning, his aunt cooks the meals. The little boat pulls up to the dock and the American beauty, Dee Moore, disembarks. It was hard not to be smitten at first sight. Dee, the same age as Pasquale, is going to stay at his hotel. Is there some mistake? She is Taylor’s understudy in Cleopatra, but has been diagnosed with stomach cancer and she is here to rest before going to Switzerland for treatment, arranged in part by a 22-year old Michael Deane. When she grows ill, a doctor is called, who informs that she doesn’t have cancer, she is pregnant. We can guess why she is here and what awaits in Switzerland.Through the short time Dee is at the inn, she and Pasquale become friends, walking among the ruins, some from World War II, on the island. His only other regular customer is the annual visit by Alvis Bender, a former American GI, who continues his attempt to write about his World War II experiences in Italy, but can’t seem to get past the first chapter that includes a brief encounter with an Italian woman before he came home. He tries to find her.Fast forward 50 years. Michael Deane is the authority on the best way to pitch movies. He’s been married multiple times. His assistant, Claire Silver, thought evaluating scripts would be more glamorous, but is inundated with lousy stories and pitches. Shane Wheeler has an idea to pitch. An elderly Italian man, who speaks little English, shows up at the Hollywood studio grasping a frayed 50-year old Michael Deane business card, seeing if he could find Dee Moore. We have the confluence of these people. Wheeler can speak Italian, so now is the translator for Pasquale; Silver tracks down Dee and the crew sets out on the journey.Author Jess Walter, though, intersperses what has happened to all the characters during this time and the lives of the new ones. Most key is that Dee never went to Switzerland. She returned to the States, gave birth to a boy she named Pasquale, Pat for short. She never became a famous actress, but started community theater. We are introduced to Pat’s troubled life and his attempts to overcome it. We are introduced to Wheeler’s and Silver’s lives, aspirations and doubts.Dreams, reinventing one self and discovering what the meanings of love, relationship, and friendship are the threads and themes in Beautiful Ruins. Almost all search for what once was and what now might be.From a writer’s perspective, it was also wonderful reading Walter’s notes on writing the book and developing the title, with which I could identify. Though the stories are different, the notion of friends in different countries reuniting after gaps of time resonated with my own experiences in Norway.

Great story with multiple characters and overlapping narratives that kept me engaged all the way through. A witty, affecting and wise novel.(Perhaps the author should have left Richard Burton as elusive as Liz Taylor, i.e. as a distant silent presence, rather than give him a voice that didn't quite work. That's a very minor quibble however.)

I read some very glowing reviews of this novel and I admired much of the writing -- the descriptions of the Italian coastline are beautiful and some of the writing about the tranquility of the area before the 60s tourist explosion is poignant. I liked the Hollywood satire too.The movement of the narrative in place and time was intriguing at first, although there maybe was too much variety by the end -- was the author worried about holding the audience's attention? When narratives jump around in this way, the author needs to take care not to be too cynical about withholding details from the reader purely to sustain suspense and there are instances in this novel where the narrative is a bit tricksy.I enjoyed the book most before a point about two thirds of the way through when a revelation in the plot was revealed and the book then seemed to lose momentum -- performing a few literary hoops and turns before the denouement. And while the very ending was poignant and fitting, the 'what happened next to whom' section seemed designed to remind the reader of the author's self-regarding skill for having introduced so many characters along the way (from US GIs to failed rock singers to real film stars).I guess it's an impressive exercise in seeing what can be spun out of a chance encounter that only lasted a few days but was remembered for a lifetime but I'd rather have seen more concentration on the relationship between the two protagonists. But the writing was exhilarating in parts so four stars.

Having been to Cinque Terre long time ago this was a lovely reminder about the uniqueness of that area. The love for the landscape and the people there shines through. As do the description of the charming but very "special" character of Los Angeles and Hollywood/Beverly Hills, another place I know fairly well. This book has to go into the top ten list of books from this decade!

The Italian bits of this book are very atmospheric and take you back to Liguria and the Cinque Terre, fishermen sitting about and small hotels clinging to the rocks. The rest is a mixture of characters from fiction and life - a wonder that something like this can be written about someone who lived - and may well be a good description of the film world now and then. I have to say that I only persevered because of the Italian characters, to whom I was drawn. The rest was a bit fanciful I thought.

This book was chosen for me as it was our book club choice.Not the usual thing that I would pick up as I am more into action / murder mystery & thriller books. But this book I thought was a delight right from the start.Set over decades from a remote disused resort on the coast of Italy to the seedy world of Los Angeles and Film making, throwing in a well known superstar actor and actress to spice things up it was a great story.Recommended!