Jess Walter

A novel that spans fifty years. The Italian housekeeper and his long-lost American starlet; the producer who once brought them together, and his assistant. A glittering world filled with unforgettable characters.

a novel

Beautiful ruins

Sarah Erle

The No. 1 New York Times BestsellerJess Walter's Beautiful Ruins is a gorgeous, glamorous novel set in 1960s Italy and a modern Hollywood studio.The story begins in 1962. Somewhere on a rocky patch of the sun-drenched Italian coastline a young innkeeper, chest-deep in daydreams, looks out over the incandescent waters of the Ligurian Sea and views an apparition: a beautiful 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 in Hollywood, when an elderly Italian man shows up on a movie studio's back lot searching for the woman he last saw at his hotel fifty years before.Gloriously inventive, funny, tender and constantly surprising, Beautiful Ruins is a novel full of fabulous and yet very flawed people, all of them striving towards another sort of life, a future that is both delightful and yet, tantalizingly, seems just out of reach.'Magic...A monument to crazy love with a deeply romantic heart' New York Times'A novel shot in sparkly Technicolor' Booklist'Hilarious and compelling' Esquire'Beautiful Ruins is a novel unlike any other you're likely to read this year' Nick Hornby, The BelieverJess Walter is the author of the National Book Award finalist The Zero and the Edgar Award-winning Citizen Vince. His previous book The Financial Lives of the Poets was published in the UK by Penguin.

Beautiful Ruins

Ned Summers 

absolutely brilliant. A wonderfully written story analysing perfectly flawed characters in a style that held me to the book until the very last words. So many choices made by the author that could have hit wrong, the wrapping-up epilogue the most obvious, but instead the whole thing seemed perfectly fit together.

Laura Mauler

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. (view spoiler)[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. (hide spoiler)]

Patricia Nelson

Jeannette Ordas

I was won in by the beautiful cover, but as I try to remember more about this book, the story just doesn't stick. I liked how all the characters were introduced and intertwined, but it wasn't memorable enough for me. Too bad, because when I started out reading it, I felt quite captured by the quirky Italian setting. 2.5 stars.

I loved the ‘writing’ within the writing, a book about creatives, screenwriters and authors is such a beautiful concept - although I didn’t love the ending it’s not what I remember when I think back - I think of the war passages (some of the most beautiful and heart-wrenching writing about war I’ve ever read) and the scenes in Hollywood and Italy.

Amelia Reyntjes

Tameka Young

One of my favorite audiobook experiences ever. This story is lush and full of ridiculously well written prose. I unfortunately had the climax of the book spoiled for me just before I finished reading, but overall I thought it was absolutely amazing.

The No. 1 New York Times Bestseller Jess Walter's Beautiful Ruins is a gorgeous, glamorous novel set in 1960s Italy and a modern Hollywood studio. The story begins in 1962. Somewhere on a rocky patch of the sun-drenched Italian coastline a young innkeeper, chest-deep in daydreams, looks out over the incandescent waters of the Ligurian Sea and views an apparition: a beautiful 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 in Hollywood, when an elderly Italian man shows up on a movie studio's back lot searching for the woman he last saw at his hotel fifty years before. Gloriously inventive, funny, tender and constantly surprising, Beautiful Ruins is a novel full of fabulous and yet very flawed people, all of them striving towards another sort of life, a future that is both delightful and yet, tantalizingly, seems just out of reach. 'Magic...A monument to crazy love with a deeply romantic heart' New York Times 'A novel shot in sparkly Technicolor' Booklist 'Hilarious and compelling' Esquire

Richard Binder

“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! ... No one gets to tell you what your life means!"

Thanks, Jess. I really needed that.

Melody Izard

It's a beautiful book full of part truths and silly circumstances. Prancing around the fun, the beautiful scenery and the real life celebrities are serious, meaningful life events.

Summer Stanley

Beautiful settings, delightful characters, and a lovely mix of cultures. 
The ending didn't satisfy all the book had created to that point. No other complaints; overall very enjoyable!

Antonella Romani

I usually don't write negative reviews but I was really let down by this book. I simply had higher hopes and expectations, I guess...
It was a great idea for a plot or story, but it just seemed like the author tried to do more than he could handle. There were at least 3-4 too many POVs/narratives to the story. There were also so many side stories interwoven together that there NO way to explore deeper into the main plot, to end up with anything other than rather superficial characters, or to not end up with a few loose ends by the end of the book. It has a pretty rushed wrap up ending. The flow of the read was also not helped by the random jumping between past and present with almost every chapter either. 
Overall, just really disappointing because it had potential to be really good and different.

Jeni Enjaian

This was another one of those books that made it on my to-read list so long ago I cannot remember what or who recommended the book to me. It certainly wasn't the quality of the book.
When I first started reading I thought that this might be an intriguing read. The beginning is the highest point of the book. From there the quality descends rapidly.
The problems with this book are numerous, do not deserve lengthy elaborations and are as follows. The timeline hops around too much between too many characters for any solid connections to be made. Characters' motivations for various actions, like Pasquale's trip to Hollywood to start with, are fuzzy at best. The Hollywood scenes are cliché Hollywood. Many of the chapters are completely pointless. After a couple chapters I stopped and tried to figure out why Walter felt that the inclusion of this chapter would move the plot of her novel along. I gave up.
I do not recommend this book at all. I finished it just because I had already put in a chunk of time before figuring out that it was pretty much worthless.

Carla Aquino

This book was a hodge podge of beautiful ruins indeed.

Rebecca Light

This book did not change my life or move me deeply in any way, but it was very lovely. Lovely is the right word. A compelling story with a bit of humor, a bit of romance, a bit of redemption, and a thoughtful plot. It's definitely good. It's just not great. If you love old Hollywood and retro Italy, that will definitely give your read a bump. I'm not a super-fan of either of those things, so I preferred the chapters that took place in modern day London, Idaho or Los Angeles. But those who drool over the likes of Liz Taylor and sun-kissed Italian villas, this book is for you.

Beautiful ruins a novel

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