The Beautiful Ruins: A Novel - Softcover

Walter, Jess

Softcover

ISBN 10: 006220713X ISBN 13: 9780062207135

Publisher: Harper Collins USA, 2012

Synopsis

Paperback. Pub Date: 07 2012 Publisher: Harper Collins USA 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 ...

About this title

Review:

Just about the perfect summer read. It is intelligent and thought-provoking, but also a lot of fun. Reading hours fly by and reaching the final page feels like a genuine wrench (Sunday Times)

Ambitious, large-hearted, exhilarating novel that leaves you wanting more . . . Very, very funny (The Times)

Beautiful Ruins is a novel unlike any other you're likely to read this year (Nick Hornby)

Romantic, very funny...Turbo-charged satire meets a Garcia Marquezesque love story. What's not to like? (Daily Mail)

Walter creates an epic here - one that took him 15 years to write. The end result, however, is well worth the wait (Observer)

A sparkling summer read (Telegraph)

Thoroughly enjoyable, a tender, funny, ridiculous tale which has love at its core and a keen satirical edge to cut through the lovely, lush romanticism (Sunday Express)

You're going to love this book (New York Times Book Review)

A brilliant, madcap meditation on fate (Kirkus Reviews)

A novel shot in sparkly Technicolor (Booklist)

The beach read of the summer (Vogue)

Hilarious and compelling (Esquire)

Magic. Walter is a believer in capricious destiny with a fine, freewheeling sense of humour . . . A monument to crazy love with a deeply romantic heart (New York Times)

Poignant, comical and marvellous (San Francisco Chronicle)

Larger-than-life characters, billowy romance and crafty satire ... Any book that includes Richard Burton as a character is fine by us (Esquire)

Cinematic and utterly romantic . . . the big beach read for summer (Sunday Times)

My absolute favourite read this year (Nick Curtis Evening Standard 'Books of the Year')

A bravura feat (Peter Kemp Sunday Times 'Books of the Year')

The beach read of 2013 (Grazia 'Books of the Year')

Think Il Postino with a walk-on part for a comically drunk Richard Burton (Peter Brookes The Times 'Books of the Year')

Walter's account of the filming of the Burton/Taylor classic Cleopatra is a playful imagining of emotional history and hidden lives just out of view. Be warned, this is a novel that may make any festive guests somewhat anti-social as I read it in two days flat (Olivia Cole GQ 'Books of the Year')

From the Back Cover:

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 fifty 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.

About this edition

• Publisher: Harper Collins USA
• Publication date: 2012
• ISBN 10: 006220713X
• ISBN 13: 9780062207135
• Binding: Paperback