Stephanie Jane reviewed Beautiful ruins by Jess Walter
Not my style
3 stars
Beautiful Ruins is a sprawling saga of a novel which takes places across two timelines, mostly in present-day Hollywood and 1960s southern Italy. While billed as a 'very, very funny' 'monument to love', I found it to be a rather over-played and self-indulgent story - albeit with fabulous cover art by Kelly Anna. It is amusing in parts and kept me entertained throughout a day so hot that I little enthusiasm to do anything but read, but I was dismayed at the gap between the high praise this book has received - along with numerous reprints - and the reality of actually reading it. Perhaps I need to be more of a Hollywood fan to appreciate it as satire?
I did like the idea of exploring so many 'what if' scenarios and missed opportunities. Characters talk about time passing them by while they wait for the 'movie of their lives …
Beautiful Ruins is a sprawling saga of a novel which takes places across two timelines, mostly in present-day Hollywood and 1960s southern Italy. While billed as a 'very, very funny' 'monument to love', I found it to be a rather over-played and self-indulgent story - albeit with fabulous cover art by Kelly Anna. It is amusing in parts and kept me entertained throughout a day so hot that I little enthusiasm to do anything but read, but I was dismayed at the gap between the high praise this book has received - along with numerous reprints - and the reality of actually reading it. Perhaps I need to be more of a Hollywood fan to appreciate it as satire?
I did like the idea of exploring so many 'what if' scenarios and missed opportunities. Characters talk about time passing them by while they wait for the 'movie of their lives to begin' and that is a particular theme of the book. Unfortunately most of the characters aren't particularly likeable. The Italian people are idealised so much as to practically be caricatures and there's a strange, long section following the antics of a drunken Richard Burton. In fact, Beautiful Ruins is padded out a number of times with strange additions that did nothing to further the central story - one chapter from a character's unwritten novel, another from a second character's autobiography, a play script recapping what we had already learned in detail about a third character. I wasn't sure why we needed these diversions as they slowed down the novel considerably.
All in all, I'm not really sure what to make of Beautiful Ruins. Some scenes are inspired, others just read as filler, and Walter's attempts to get as many tear-jerking happy-ever-afters into the ending quickly became nauseating! I think I'll chalk this novel up to 'worth a try, but not my style' and pass on any more of his novels.
