Beautiful Ruins

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.

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.

Thanks to my best friend, Chloe, for letting me borrow this and being my personal library in this era of quarantine!

I'm not going to write a brief synopsis in this review because there's so many storylines going on over so much time that I don't even know where to start. So just read the synopsis up top. This is also going to be a short review. The writing was good. There was nothing that stood out to me, but nothing I hated either. And that pretty much goes for the whole plot. I first considered giving this four stars because I enjoyed reading it, but the ending was very underwhelming. It was like there was this lead up and setting the scene for this one moment throughout the whole book and then when it happened, nothing happened. It was just eh. So, weird ending. But I enjoyed getting to know the characters and I always enjoy a good multiple POV. But I ended up giving it three stars just because it was so forgettable. If you ask me what this book was about this time next year, I will have no idea. So that's it. Not great, not terrible plot with not great, not terrible writing.

Would I recommend?
Do you just like reading for the heck of it? Like historical fiction and multiple POV (this is a must)? Then, go for it. If you're looking for your next favorite novel, keep looking.

I wasn't expecting this.

I thought Beautiful Ruins was another one of those predictable historical fiction books, with a thwarted romance, set in troubled times, concluding with a happy ending.

No, that's not this story.

There's a man who is reluctantly running his father's hotel in a little-known village in Italy. There's a young actress who shows up in the village, dying. There's a Hollywood producer sent to Italy to save a movie that's running wildly over cost. There's a writer who can't seem to put more down on paper than the first chapter. There's Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor. And that's all in the past.

There's a young man, lost to drugs and his efforts to find fame. There's a scriptwriter who is pitching a movie about the Donner expedition. There's a young woman who is tired of the reality of her dream job. And that's all in the present.

All of these storylines come together in a beautifully written novel, a novel of regret and yet also a novel of hope.

Here are a few of my favorite lines:

“And if he wasn't entirely happy, he wasn't unhappy, either. Rather, he found himself inhabiting the vast, empty plateau where most people live, between boredom and contentment.”

Walter, Jess. Beautiful Ruins (p. 7). Harper. Kindle Edition.

“Life, he thought, is a blatant act of imagination.”

Walter, Jess. Beautiful Ruins (p. 14). Harper. Kindle Edition.

“This is a love story, Michael Deane says. But, really, what isn't? Doesn't the detective love the mystery, or the chase, or the nosy female reporter, who is even now being held against her wishes at an empty warehouse on the waterfront? Surely the serial murderer loves his victims, and the spy loves his gadgets or his country or the exotic counterspy. The ice trucker is torn between his love for ice and truck, and the competing chefs go crazy for scallops, and the pawnshop guys adore their junk, just as the Housewives live for catching glimpses of their own Botoxed brows in gilded hall mirrors, and the rocked-out dude on 'roids totally wants to shred the ass of the tramp-tatted girl on Hookbook, and because this is reality, they are all in love—madly, truly—with the body mic clipped to their back buckle, and the producer casually suggesting just one more angle, one more Jell-O shot. And the robot loves his master, alien loves his saucer, Superman loves Lois, Lex, and Lana, Luke loves Leia (till he finds out she's his sister), and the exorcist loves the demon even as he leaps out the window with it, in full soulful embrace, as Leo loves Kate and they both love the sinking ship, and the shark—God, the shark loves to eat, which is what the mafioso loves, too—eating and money and Paulie and omertà—the way the cowboy loves his horse, loves the corseted girl behind the piano bar, and sometimes loves the other cowboy, as the vampire loves night and neck, and the zombie—don't even start with the zombie, sentimental fool; has anyone ever been more lovesick than a zombie, that pale, dull metaphor for love, all animal craving and lurching, outstretched arms, his very existence a sonnet about how much he wants those brains? This, too, is a love story.”

Walter, Jess. Beautiful Ruins (pp. 325-326). Harper. Kindle Edition.

Short review: An intertwining story of that ranges over 50 years, two continents and many characters. This is both a well written book and an excellently narrated audiobook (I alternated between kindle and audiobook). It starts in 1962 Italy and moves back and forth between modern day Hollywood. There are a lot of characters and while there is a point for all of them, there might be a few too many of them. That is really my only complaint. I love the intertwining stories. I like the various types of love stories. I like even more that the love stories tend to focus more on commitment than personal fulfillment. It is not a perfect, everything is happy in the end book. But it is reasonably happy (and makes sense when it is not). And the characters are mostly likable (or at least understandable.) This is actually a popular fiction book that really lives up to the hype. I alternated between 4 and 5 stars and would give 4.5 if I could. It was very good, but I don't know it would be a book that I would re-read, which is why I ended up on 4 stars.

My full review is on my blog at http://bookwi.se/beautiful-ruins/

Pasquale Tursi is the proprietor of the uniquely named “Hotel Adequate View” located in Porto Vergogna. It's a place people arrive at by mistake.

Dee Moray is the Hollywood starlet diagnosed with a terminal condition that gets shuffled off to this “rumour of a town” She is only the second American guest the hotel has seen aside from a failed novelist who, after years of visiting, has only managed to punch out a single thin chapter of a war memoir.

Jump to the present day where we meet Claire Silver the over-educated assistant to one of Hollywood's biggest producers Micheal Deane, a seventy-two-year-old man with “the face of a nine-year-old Filipino girl” the result of innumberable “facials, spa treatments, mud baths, cosmetic procedures, lifts and staples, collagen implants, outpatient touch-ups, tannings, Botox injections, cyst and growth removals, and stem-cell injections.”

Claire is getting pitched by wanna-be screenwriter Shane Wheeler on a movie about the fated (and cannibalistic) 1846 expedition party called “Donner!” (Exclamation mark essential)

Oh, and there's Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor too.

Jess Walters somehow manages to juggle a horde of characters spanning decades and continents. A perfect summer read about thwarted ambition, dashed hopes and beauty amidst the ruins of expectation.