Beautiful Ruins, Jess Walters' (The
Financial Lives of the Poets, The Zero) latest, is nothing less than a joy
to read. In it, we follow the lives of characters so real, so well drawn, that
we need to know what becomes of them. It's 1962, Italy. Pasquale has inherited
the Hotel Adequate View, his parents' hotel on the Italian coast. As he dreams
(a little unrealistically) of making it a fashionable destination for wealthy
Americans, a beautiful American actress, Dee Moray arrives, fresh from the
scandal-ridden set of Cleopatra. Pasquale is not really free, but
he falls in love with her. Then he learns she's dying. Or is she?
In the
present day, Claire, whose writerly ambitions are shelved, is the assistant to
Michael Deane, the somewhat washed up, once famous Hollywood producer, who long
ago got his start working on Cleopatra, fixing problems, shall we
say. Disillusioned, yet still hopeful, Claire dreams of discovering the next
big thing. Into her office walk a young screenwriter with, of all things, a pitch
for "Donner!" a movie about the ill-fated Donner party, and an old
Italian man on a quest. It's Pasquale.
By turns
hilarious and touching, Beautiful Ruins, asks
good questions: how do we do the right thing? Can we make amends? It paints
indelible pictures; in a wonderful fight scene Pasquale defends his turf
against thugs, cave paintings play a beautiful recurring role, Richard Burton
himself has a very funny scene, an alcoholic former soldier, comes year after
year to the Hotel Adequate View, writing and rewriting one chapter of his novel
before finding a way to make his life make sense.
With a
cast of characters wide and deep, and stories tautly plotted and interwoven, Beautiful Ruins looks at life, that
"glorious catastrophe" with a satirical, yet kind and discerning eye.
-Keelin Kane, CGB Bookseller
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