Beautiful Ruins

By: Jess Walter

Narrated by: Edoardo Ballerini

Length: 12 hrs and 53 mins

Publisher's summary

Audie Award Nominee, Fiction and Best Solo Narration, 2013

The story begins in 1962. 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 spies an apparition: a tall, thin woman, a vision in white, approaching him on a boat. She is an actress, he soon learns, an American starlet, and she is dying.

And the story begins again today, half a world away, when an elderly Italian man shows up on a movie studio's back lot - searching for the mysterious woman he last saw at his hotel decades earlier.

What unfolds is a dazzling, yet deeply human, roller coaster of a novel, spanning 50 years and nearly as many lives. From the lavish set of Cleopatra to the shabby revelry of the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, Walter introduces us to the tangled lives of a dozen unforgettable characters: the starstruck Italian innkeeper and his long-lost love; the heroically preserved producer who once brought them together and his idealistic young assistant; the army veteran turned fledgling novelist, and the rakish Richard Burton himself, whose appetites set the whole story in motion - along with the husbands and wives, lovers and dreamers, superstars and losers, who populate their world in the decades that follow.

Gloriously inventive, constantly surprising, Beautiful Ruins is a story of flawed yet fascinating people, navigating the rocky shores of their lives while clinging to their improbable dreams.

©2012 Jess Walter (P)2012 HarperCollins Publisher

Unbelievably romantic

Would you try another book from Jess Walter and/or Edoardo Ballerini?

I don't think so.

What was the most interesting aspect of this story? The least interesting?

I don't want to give away the plot but the most interesting thing was how the author got away with using a known person in his story.

Have you listened to any of Edoardo Ballerini’s other performances before? How does this one compare?

No

Could you see Beautiful Ruins being made into a movie or a TV series? Who should the stars be?

Yes, it is perfect for a movie.

Any additional comments?

This is the second time I read a book based on extravagant praise by an audible reader/reviewer, and, the second time I was disappointed. I realize you want to sell books, but using over the top reviews might get a reader to buy one or two books but will not create a repeat buyer. I'll still buy audio books but will go to other sources for critiques.

Stabbing Beauty

On my shelf for almost 4 years, after I couldn't make it past page 20, I dusted it off, and well... So many have read and reviewed this novel in that time that I doubt many will even read this review. But ... I ... just have to say...

Wow.... I'm nearly speechless. I cannot shake it after finishing it a week ago.

In one book,

Such brilliant, breathtaking, blazing, Botticellian beauty and appreciation for Being alive,

coupled with

A sweeping spiritual smackdown of sadness and a stark reminder that we're only here once.


Stabbing Beauty.

Not Sure What the Fuss is About

I selected this book because I have been to Italy many times and love the country and its culture. I stopped listening somewhere in the middle and wasn't interested enough to go back and finish. The characters are flat stereotypes of Italians and Hollywood types. The tennis court story was a cute way to make Pasquale into a "dumb Italian." I didn't buy the pregnancy versus cancer story. Is Dee Shirley Temple in disguise? And even in the 60's I think a woman would be able to tell she was pregnant after a couple of months. The Donner party screenplay subplot is absurd. The Donner party or similar stories has been done many times, why would it get any attention. I liked the narrator.

I'm glad I listened to it, but....

I liked the book, but I didn't love it. So many books I have loved more. I, like some of the listeners, don't understand the hype. It was a fun story, great setting, with some lovely and some despicable characters. I'd recommend it but only if you don't have to spend a full credit on it.

Belle Rovine

Any additional comments?

I purchased this book partially on the strength of the reviews, but mostly because the narrator is Eduardo Ballerini, who totally captivated me in a historical fiction series by Robert McCammon. As usual, he didn't disappoint, and neither did this novel, which I just adored.

This book is a very gentle but also very funny satire, making me laugh out loud many times. All of its characters are deeply flawed and just about everyone has a story that sets them up for being mocked. Nevertheless they are all very enjoyable satellites revolving around the story between the two most serious and affecting central characters, Dee and Pasquale.

If you love movies, you will love this novel, which hilariously sends up the movie business from the early 60's right up to today in glorious detail. As a film lover myself, I actually spent much of the time casting the film version in my head while I listened.

I will say that there were times when I thought the story dragged a bit in it effort to give EVERY SINGLE character his/her due, but inevitably I would be drawn back into the story and at the end I loved the way it actually wrapped up almost every storyline.

Wonderful novel, awesome narrator!

"Our lovely, ruined lives"

“Beautiful Ruins” has been on best book lists for several years now, and another review is probably pointless. But I will persist, because it is enjoyable to recognize a fine American novel. And also because my reflections on “Ruins” have some relevance to a novel that is more au courant: Jonathen Franzen’s “Purity”.

Both novels have a similar hipness; both stories are addicted to the latest pop culture (reality TV, internet hackers) and yet reach back in time and find an origin to today’s indulgences in the serious conflicts of the past (WWII, the Cold War). Both weave multiple story lines together with improbable artifice to bring insouciant American youth (Generation X, Millenials) face to face with the old world drama in their personal histories. Both novels do all this with accomplished narrative skills and great writing.

But “Beautiful Ruins” is the more rewarding work. Why? Because in “Purity”, the smartness is everything; insight is lacking. “Purity” is an impressive display of facile storytelling and adroit writing, but it lacks epiphany.

Whereas epiphany blossoms from every chapter of “Ruins”. One of the main characters is even accused being an “epiphany addict”. As could be author Jess Walters. Walters has a teeming backlog of epiphanies that he could not even fit into the main narrative. In the final chapter they tumble out in a spilled cornucopia of insight and inspiration; he piles up minor epiphanies one upon another in a frenetic collage until we understand that all of life, even its most mundane events, is part of one great epiphany, the only great epiphany:

That we all live “lovely, ruined lives”. That our excesses, that our moments of madness, that the catastrophes and crack-ups in our lives are the great artistic crises that provide meaning and poetry. That these moments of dramatic if artificial insight are our only defense against the profligacy of overwhelming, all powerful nature, the universe that wastes our lives one after another and tosses them into the rubbish heap of forgotten biography.

“Purity” does not have a message that comes close to this in terms of affirmative power. Or am I missing something? Maybe Franzen’s next novel should be entitled “Epiphany”…..

LOVELY STORY

Anybody who ever worked in Hollywood, or tried to write anything, will find special pleasure in this book. Anybody who ever spent time in Italy or Spokane will, too. Even if you didn't, it's a nice break from murder mysteries. Well told, extremely well read. A big treat. DD

One of the Best Ever

What made the experience of listening to Beautiful Ruins the most enjoyable?

Narrator's fluency in Italy makes us love the way he narrates it.

Who was your favorite character and why?

Pasquale it is. His humbleness his passion his dreams makes me love his character.

What does Edoardo Ballerini bring to the story that you wouldn’t experience if you just read the book?

The way names pronounced and Italy was spoken. Someone from far east (Sri Lanka) will never feel how beautiful the Italy sounds.

Was this a book you wanted to listen to all in one sitting?

Not exactly. First part is slow but it catches up gradually.

Any additional comments?

yes our life is full of beautiful ruins. Love the work of the Author.

Best Book of the Summer

Everything about this book was perfect for me - the rhythm of Walter's writing, the storylines, the closure at the end, and the narration. Not only my favorite book out of everything I've read by Walter, but my favorite book of the summer (and quite possibly the year).

Ho Hum!

Such a slow start to an okay story. I was looking for an exciting entertaining read, it was not this book During the last hour when all the stories came together did it get somewhat Interesting. Had to read it for my book club meeting or I would have never finished it. Actually, the rest of the members made a second selection to avoid completing it.. Boring waste of time in my opinion.