Beautiful Ruins

I wasn't expecting this.

I thought Beautiful Ruins was another one of those predictable historical fiction books, with a thwarted romance, set in troubled times, concluding with a happy ending.

No, that's not this story.

There's a man who is reluctantly running his father's hotel in a little-known village in Italy. There's a young actress who shows up in the village, dying. There's a Hollywood producer sent to Italy to save a movie that's running wildly over cost. There's a writer who can't seem to put more down on paper than the first chapter. There's Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor. And that's all in the past.

There's a young man, lost to drugs and his efforts to find fame. There's a scriptwriter who is pitching a movie about the Donner expedition. There's a young woman who is tired of the reality of her dream job. And that's all in the present.

All of these storylines come together in a beautifully written novel, a novel of regret and yet also a novel of hope.

Here are a few of my favorite lines:

“And if he wasn't entirely happy, he wasn't unhappy, either. Rather, he found himself inhabiting the vast, empty plateau where most people live, between boredom and contentment.”

Walter, Jess. Beautiful Ruins (p. 7). Harper. Kindle Edition.

“Life, he thought, is a blatant act of imagination.”

Walter, Jess. Beautiful Ruins (p. 14). Harper. Kindle Edition.

“This is a love story, Michael Deane says. But, really, what isn't? Doesn't the detective love the mystery, or the chase, or the nosy female reporter, who is even now being held against her wishes at an empty warehouse on the waterfront? Surely the serial murderer loves his victims, and the spy loves his gadgets or his country or the exotic counterspy. The ice trucker is torn between his love for ice and truck, and the competing chefs go crazy for scallops, and the pawnshop guys adore their junk, just as the Housewives live for catching glimpses of their own Botoxed brows in gilded hall mirrors, and the rocked-out dude on 'roids totally wants to shred the ass of the tramp-tatted girl on Hookbook, and because this is reality, they are all in love—madly, truly—with the body mic clipped to their back buckle, and the producer casually suggesting just one more angle, one more Jell-O shot. And the robot loves his master, alien loves his saucer, Superman loves Lois, Lex, and Lana, Luke loves Leia (till he finds out she's his sister), and the exorcist loves the demon even as he leaps out the window with it, in full soulful embrace, as Leo loves Kate and they both love the sinking ship, and the shark—God, the shark loves to eat, which is what the mafioso loves, too—eating and money and Paulie and omertà—the way the cowboy loves his horse, loves the corseted girl behind the piano bar, and sometimes loves the other cowboy, as the vampire loves night and neck, and the zombie—don't even start with the zombie, sentimental fool; has anyone ever been more lovesick than a zombie, that pale, dull metaphor for love, all animal craving and lurching, outstretched arms, his very existence a sonnet about how much he wants those brains? This, too, is a love story.”

Walter, Jess. Beautiful Ruins (pp. 325-326). Harper. Kindle Edition.