Paperback, 368 Pages

Adult-Contemporary

Review Copy

From the moment it opens—on a rocky patch of Italian coastline, circa 1962, when a daydreaming young innkeeper looks out over the water and spies a mysterious woman approaching him on a boat—Jess Walter’s Beautiful Ruins is a dazzling, yet deeply human, roller coaster of a novel. From the lavish set of Cleopatra to the shabby revelry of the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, to the back lots of contemporary Hollywood, Beautiful Ruins is gloriously inventive and constantly surprising—a story of flawed yet fascinating people navigating the rocky shores of their lives while clinging to their improbable dreams.

Beautiful Ruins begins its intoxicating tale with Pasquale Tursi, a native from Porto Vergogna, a well known town distinguished by its failure and a few upside down morals. Pasquale like his recently deceased father believes in his little village, he sees the potential of the land and its people so against popular thought he stays on his family estate and begins rebuilding and renovating an old hotel in hopes that it will attract American tourists. 

Attract it does, and the first is a famous Hollywood actress Dee Moray. She winds up staying at the hotel and in the process shares that shes meeting an old friend and also dying. Pasquale riveted by Dee's beauty and the slight pull he feels to help her is obliged to find her friend when he never shows up. Its in pursuit of this "friend" where the story really begins as old Hollywood and various stories collide in a beautiful disaster.

Its almost impossible to write a review for this book, due to the feeling that I get for others in order to understand the book you must experience the read. The best way I can describe Beautiful Ruins is interesting magic, interesting due to its story-line and magic due to its incredible transitions and flow between various time frames. Funny, outrageous, sad and heartwarming all at the same time, a novel contemporary lovers will devour and others will appreciate for its exemplary writing and unique presentation.

4/5- Thanks to Tlc and Harper for review copy

Jess Walter is the author of six novels, including the national bestseller The Financial Lives of the Poets, the National Book Award finalist The Zero, and Citizen Vince, winner of the Edgar Award for best novel. His collection of short fiction, We Live in Water, has just been published by Harper Perennial. He lives in Spokane, Washington. Find out more about Jess at his website and follow him onTwitter.