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

My mind wandered

I know this won’t be a popular review but I have to be honest. I picked this one up because of the endless five star ratings. Unfortunately I cannot join that club. I found the book choppy and the characters shallow. I didn’t connect emotionally to any of them, not even Pasquale and Dee Moray. Sure there were parts that I enjoyed, especially the scenes in 1962 Italy. The descriptions of Porto Vergogna were enchanting. It was the change to the present day Hollywood storyline that I found rather dull. Even the addition of Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor didn’t manage to light my fire. I found my mind wondering often and that’s never a good sign. Too many characters, too many storylines, none of which were terribly compelling. I did force myself to finish the book, but it was a chore. I guess it wasn’t my cup of tea.

Edoardo Ballerini did a good job narrating. His knowledge of Italian added authenticity to Pasquale and helped bring me into the beautiful setting.

Best Mistake I Ever Made On Audible...

Any additional comments?

I have listened to over 550 books, some more than once. I can spend hours searching for the best books worthy of my cherished credits. Then, two nights ago, when I opened the home page to shop, Beautiful Ruins was one of the featured books, however I actually thought I had clicked the book next to it. As I said, BEST mistake I've ever made. Soo much detail and development. I never knew I could love a book where all the characters seem so flawed. Needless to say, no hours spent shopping for use of my next credit... another Jess Walter book. Then I'll shop Edoardo Ballerini books! You should too!

Literary Cinemascope

*Love don't make things nice - it ruins everything. It breaks your heart. It makes things a mess. We aren't here to make things perfect. We are here to ruin ourselves and to break our hearts and to love the wrong people and die.* [Moonstruck]

The ruination of love, a promising career, a cliff-side village, innocent ideals, a culture, even a handsome youthful face, ...elements that comprise this *beautiful* novel about balancing what we want, with what is best. It is Time that moves the element of Ruin in each case: deceit, vanity, circumstance, ego, and duty--and author Walter perfectly constructs every minute of time in this brilliant book with insightfullness and finesse...my favorite Jess Walter book to date, and one of my favorite novels of the year. A cast of some of the most memorable and endearing characters to come along in a while (and there are a lot of them in this 40 year saga), including the larger-than-life tornado of Liz Taylor and Richard Burton, in a rare supporting role. It is the breathtaking Italian coast that steals the show as the main character -- so perfectly drawn that I remember that sea breeze off the Amalfi and Liguaria coasts like I was there just yesterday. Liz and Dick buzz through this seaside town and these villager's lives like a wreckless speedboat, and the story develops in that ever-growing destructive wake.

This book is cinemascope in text! About as different in subject as you could get from Walter's recent The Financial Lives of Poets, but still glittering with his original and accurate voice, his knack for capturing the social zeitgeist, and his tender compassion masked so well as dark irony. Written and performed so damned well, that I thought parts were absolutely serious (it's Hollyweird...who knows?) and it took me a few minutes to remember, "this is Jess Walter...this is sarcasm, this is funny!" (outbursts of laughter followed). He describes the lecherous and oily machinations of the 60's Hollywood scene, and a particularly vile film producer that has had so many spa treatments, facial surgeries, botox injections, "cyst and growth removals," that at 72 yrs. old he looks "like a 9-yr. old Filipino girl;" this waxen-faced producer has his assistant hold "Wild Pitch Fridays", one where a hopeful screenwriter even pitches a movie about "Donner!" (complete with exclamation point and chapter entitled "Eating Human Flesh")--it is gut-busting funny. A highlight of the book was the too-brief section where Sir Richard Burton appears--a ridiculously elegant drunk womanizer--performed so well by narrator Edoardo Ballerini that I enthusiastically made everyone I came in contact with while I listened share this part.

But, high-brow chuckles aside, this is not a humorous novel--it is a love story--or at least, several love stories, with *beautiful* and poignant scenes that just resonnate in the listener. Walter creates heart warming (and heartbreaking) moments, as well as the wonderful and sincere Pasquale, one of the most lovelorn characters since Florentino from Gabriel Marquez's Love in the Time of Cholera --and one of the few characters with conscience in this story, that actually even considers the theme of desire vs. duty. (A conscience imbedded in him by a dying Italian mama and the great character of his old crone aunt, a "witch" that calls women whores and puts a curse on a drunken Sir Richard.)

The last small section of the book is one of the most outstanding "wrap-ups" I've read --moving, and again, *beautiful* in every sense.

Large and sweeping, absolutely panoramic; but it is Walter's undeniable talent that aligns it all so effortlessly that it flows into a masterpiece. Ballerini as narrator: Perfezione! From his lilting Italian prose, to his remarkable Welsh drunk dialect...no one could have performed this book better. Some may find the bulk of cast and their individual stories overwhelming, or the skipping between the past and present confusing; the conversations can languish and don't always serve to move the story forward...but there was nowhere else I wanted to go, and I loved every minute of this beautiful book..

Meh... not sure what all the hype is about.

I actually didn't finish this book. I feel a bit lost... I am totally baffled as to how it's getting such rave reviews. I had such high hopes for this book. It looked beautiful. Sounded beautiful. Had such literary potential. But then I began listening. And listening. And listening. And I waited for that moment that everyone else seemed to have, where the descriptions made them want to drop everything and fly to Italy. Or where the amazing writing of old Hollywood captivated them. It just never happened. I was not only bored with the story, but never have I read a story that so abruptly jarred me back and forth between scenes. It just didn't flow nicely. Plus, there were some really odd changes with the tenses, shifting from past to present. About 3/4 of the way through (blasphemous, I know), I just gave up. In all honesty, there are so many other books I'd rather be reading. Not sure why I wasn't one of the enlightened ones, but I just wasn't.

1st review after close to 400 books in my library.

I'm really only writing this review because of how close I came to never experiencing this marvel of a book due to some of the negative reviews. When a book has as many glowing reviews as this one, I'll go to the Amazon reviews so I can choose to only see the negative reviews. Only because wildly popular can also be a warning. I guess I read a few reviews that were convincing enough to leave it languishing in my wish list forever with other titles that may or may never make it to the library. And then, I think Audible made it a "Daily Deal" or sent me an email saying "Something in your wish list is on sale,"
and made it a buy 2 for 1 credit. Even then, it sat in my library for several months before I gave it a try. You can read hundreds of other reviews that will go into details and specifics of style and comparisons so I will only say that as a lifelong reader and now listener and reader, I've come to believe that if you read 100 books, you may be fortunate enough to come across 1 this wonderful in that 100. Not in every 100 but in this case yes. So, if this is the first time you have considered this book, or more importantly, if you have been considering it and some of those well written negative reviews have kept you from getting this title, I'll add my voice and urge you to do yourself the favor.

Beautiful Book

I can not tell you how much I enjoyed this book. It is really several stories in one starting with Pasquel a small hotel owner in a very small Italian coastal village to present day Hollywood with Chair a young disillusioned development assistant.
Jess Walter is very good at descriptions and has a real feel for the locations described and life.
I got this book because of an NPR review rated it as the best new novel of the year. I agree
One other thing I think Edoardo Ballerini was fabulous as the narrator

The Perfect Summer Read

"Beautiful Ruins" is set in Italy, in Hollywood, in Edinburgh, Portland, Idaho and Seattle, but mostly it is set in summer -- even the darker passages are warm and lit by humor. A nimble series of interlocking plots is set in motion during the filming of "Cleopatra" in Rome, which plays out into the present. Since there are so many colliding (or colluding) stories, it is a pleasure to note that there are no stock characters, no CGI extras on hand: even minor characters assert their individuality. In particular, Richard Burton has an extended cameo that is both hilarious and irresistible -- the reader gets a real sense of the actor's intense charisma, as well as a cool assessment of the damage left in a narcissist's wake. Of the major characters, my very favorite is the wily, amoral puppet-master Michael Deane: he is so entirely shameless, so entirely and unconflictedly himself, that all is bulldozed before him. He makes the mess that starts the story, and more or less cleans it up eventually.

This is a satire, but one with warmth and humor as well as anger.

The narration, by Edoardo Ballerini, deserves special praise, for his fluent reading of Italian as well as for his subtle acting.

Over Hyped

Friends raved about this one and reviewers gave it 5 stars so I took a chance. Beautiful Ruins was not for me. Good premise adding a backstory to the Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor firestorm making Cleopatra, with new characters. Parts were entertaining, but overall, the different points of view were disjointed, not flowing back together and characters were not developed beyond surface aspects. The ideas were present yet not explored with enough detail, creating real people you cared about. The ending was rushed.

YOU...MUST...READ...THIS.

This is one of the most beautiful and entertaining works I have read in a very long time. I had never heard of Jess Walter, but I sure will watch for him now. I had heard the voice(s) of Edoardo Balerini, reading Lou Berney's Gutshot Straight, and I loved the narration. Balerini's Italian is magical. The language just flows off his tongue with such gorgeous melodies and passages that you just want to visit Italy right now. The story itself is very complex (Braided is the author's word for the structure, and, duh, it is the perfect word.) The book follows the lives of a few Italians who live in a tiny village called Porto Vergogna, a place so small that it can only be reached by fishing boat. The other characters are Americans. Deborah Moore is a tall, beautiful actress who is sent to the town for spurious reasons. Rome is lit up by the filming of Cleopatra, and the world is lit up by the romance of Liz Taylor and Richard Burton. Many other characters come into and out of the lives of the protagonists, and the book spans the time between 1962 and the present. The writing is extremely skillful. Several chapters are written in different voices, and Walter manages this feat beautifully. I loved this book without qualification. It is full of life, hope, sadness, genuine redemption and most of all, love. I cannot imagine an Audible reader not loving this book.

Unexpected Delight

One of my favorite pastimes is to browse the audible website which is how I found this book. Based on other reviews, I decided to give it a try....someone mentioned they heard high praise of it on NPR which was good enough for me. It took me an hour or so to get into it....I can honestly say I didn't like the whole Donner party stuff but weathered that storyline well enough. In the end I think this will go down as one of my all time favorite reads. The wonderful reading by Edoardo just enhances the characters. It was a wonderfully and inventively woven tale which ended with me shedding a few quiet tears...though it's not sad.....just the richness and fullness of life.