[XQA]≡ PDF Free Beautiful Ruins A Novel Jess Walter 9780061928123 Books

Beautiful Ruins A Novel Jess Walter 9780061928123 Books

Download As PDF : Beautiful Ruins A Novel Jess Walter 9780061928123 Books

Beautiful Ruins A Novel Jess Walter 9780061928123 Books

What a wonderful book! It's a beautifully told tale of love lost and found. It tugs at the heartstrings, but it's not depressing. The settings are wonderful, from a tiny Italian fishing village in 1962 to present day Hollywood, the northwest, and the U.K. The characters are wonderfully drawn. The actor Richard Burton even makes an appearance. The plot is unique. There's romance, but I wouldn't classify it as a romance. There's dark humor, but not slapstick laugh-out-loud humor. There's no explicit sex or violence. It's an exquisitely written, character-driven story that's perfect for summer. There are so many bestsellers that feel as if there were churned out in a factory and dumbed down to 5th grade reading level. It's so nice to read a book by a truly talented author. I'll definitely look for more books by Jess Walter.


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Beautiful Ruins A Novel Jess Walter 9780061928123 Books Reviews

It's the kind of place one dreams about when longing to get away. Porto Vergogna is a small fishing village in Italy. There are a handful of houses, a place for the fisherman to cast off from and return to daily and a hotel, the Adequate View. Pasquale is the new owner of the hotel, his father having recently died. He has returned from school in Florence to take over the family business and he is full of plans to make this decrepit hotel a tourist attraction. His dream is to attract American tourists as everyone knows that is the measure of success.

It is a miracle when the boat approaches. An American tourist! Not only an American, but an American movie actresss! Dee Moray is in Italy as a cast member in the blockbuster Cleopatra, a movie that is making headlines even before it is finished as the press can't get enough of Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton and their on-again, off-again love affair that is just starting. Dee has been sent here by one of the movie administrators. She is very ill and is waiting there for her lover to come and help her through the illness.

Thus starts a novel that is a delight to read. It moves across time from 1962 to the present, across continents from Italy to America to London. Along the way are famous actors, Italian dreamers, and the men and women who come to Hollywood to try to make dreams come true. It is about love and dreams and how we sometimes settle or find the fulfillment of our dreams in unexpected ways. Above all, we are entranced with the characters we meet and the adventures they take us on. This book is recommended for readers of literary fiction.
I am deeply impressed with this book. I finished it a few days ago, but the characters are still with me and the scenes keep reapparing in my mind. It is a rare treat to read a novel so good that I keep on reading it in my mind even after the characters have walked off the stage.

The novel is a fascinating tapestry weaving characters and time in a way that is anything but linear. We go back to World War Two, jump forward to the present, visit intermediate times, and skip from character to character, and somehow it all flows perfectly. Many authors try this "tapestry" technique, but often the result is jerky and irritating. What makes this one work so well is that each scene is presented at exactly the right time to move the story forward. All else realigns itself to facilitate that movement.

The quality of the writing is excellent. It has always seemed odd to me that there are a gazillion genres of fiction, and then there is this other thing called "literary" fiction. Hello? *All* novels should be literary. But the sad truth is that they're not. They are filled with awkward scenes, grammatical errors, endless exposition, and artificial devices to force an ungainly plot to stagger forward. Which is why I keep coming back to "literary" fiction; it's written by pros who know how to write and how to tell a good story. And Beautiful Ruins is one of the best I've read in years. The prose is so rich and filled with meaning that I found myself highlighting, which is something I almost never do when reading fiction.

I give it seven stars. You can't see the sixth and seventh ones because peaks at five, but trust me, it's there.
I loved this novel. This writer is truly an old soul who knows how to make the reader laugh until tears roll, without making the story shallow, who has the ability to paint a perfect picture without boring the reader to tears, to break from one story line into a completely new story line without losing or annoying the reader, but rather immediately catching the reader up in an entirely new plot. He has the ability to create multiple story lines all at once, flipping from one to the other, seamlessly and all-enthralling.
The story of the Hollywood "would-be" Producer, Claire, made me laugh until I had tear streaming down my face. The emptiness of the bulk of Hollywood productions is a thing of sadness and yet hilariously funny; all the crap they produce yet all the money Hollywood makes is beyond me, and this author expresses it perfectly.
Walter weaves the stories of the aging Hollywood Producer, Michael, his assistant Claire and then the story of an old Cinque Terra town in Italy with the modern Hollywood scene together to make for a fabulous story. Never boring--always captivating. Above all, it is beautifully written.
I gave the book 4 stars only because I save 5 stars for those novels worthy of the Pulitzer. This book is so near that aptitude that it was a difficult choice but there is no 4 and 1/2 star rating!
This novel is obviously written by a writer who has lived and experienced a bit of life. No young up-and-comer could have reached into his soul to have pulled out this story--he had to have lived a life full of living, and knowing how tenuous and short life is, to have produced this work. I related to his words and his thoughts completely. The beauty and sadness of life were told through the stories of a handful of people whose lives were interwoven through the decades between World War II and the present. A beautiful story told by a master writer. A must read.
What a wonderful book! It's a beautifully told tale of love lost and found. It tugs at the heartstrings, but it's not depressing. The settings are wonderful, from a tiny Italian fishing village in 1962 to present day Hollywood, the northwest, and the U.K. The characters are wonderfully drawn. The actor Richard Burton even makes an appearance. The plot is unique. There's romance, but I wouldn't classify it as a romance. There's dark humor, but not slapstick laugh-out-loud humor. There's no explicit sex or violence. It's an exquisitely written, character-driven story that's perfect for summer. There are so many bestsellers that feel as if there were churned out in a factory and dumbed down to 5th grade reading level. It's so nice to read a book by a truly talented author. I'll definitely look for more books by Jess Walter.