Beautiful Ruins

This book is flawed. It gets pretentious sometimes. It jumps around from story to story a little too much. But you know what? It's funny and moving and entertaining, topped with wit and social commentary. I can't give it less than 5.

Every character is achingly real, distinct, and well-written. The dialogue is sharp, powerful, and often very funny. The writing is great, and it never draws attention to itself, letting you enjoy the story and characters.

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 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.