Details
- ISBN 9780061928123 / 0061928127
- Title Beautiful Ruins
- Author Jess Walter
- Format Hardcover
- Pages 352
- Publisher Harper
- Language English
- Dimensions 163mm x 30mm x 237mm
The acclaimed, award-winning author of the national bestseller “The Financial Lives of the Poets” returns with his funniest and most romantic novel yet: the story of an almost-love affair that begins on the Italian coast in 1962 and is rekindled in Hollywood 50 years later.
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.
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.
Jess Walter is the author of “The Zero ” (a finalist for
Jess Walter is the author of “The Zero ” (a finalist for the “National Book Award”), “ Citizen Vince” (a winner of ththe “National Book Award”), “ Citizen Vince” (a winner of the Edgar Allan Poe Award for Best Novel), " Land of the Blinde Edgar Allan Poe Award for Best Novel), “ Land of the Blind”, “ Ruby Ridge”, and “Over Tumbled Graves ” (a “ New York T”, “ Ruby Ridge”, and “Over Tumbled Graves ” (a “ New York Times” Notable Book of the Year). He lives in Spokane, Washinimes" Notable Book of the Year). He lives in Spokane, Washingto
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