JULY 2012 - AudioFile
As the sole voice for a veritable smorgasbord of characters, time periods and plotlines, Edoardo Ballerini works magic with this audio production. Whether capturing the heartache of an Italian innkeeper or the frustration of a Hollywood production assistant, Ballerini lends just the right inflection and tone to some outstanding dialogue from Walter. There doesn’t seem to be an accent Ballerini can’t pinpoint or a fictional person he can’t animate. As the action shifts from the 1960s to the present day and back again, from actual plotted events to in-text novels or movie pitches, Ballerini does not once falter in his faithfulness to the overall story, one that wrestles with the essentials of dreams, love, and life. L.B.F. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award, 2013 Audies Winner © AudioFile 2012, Portland, Maine
Janet Maslin
As with any story that relies on scrambled chronology, it's worth wondering how Beautiful Ruins would work as a straightforward narrative. Not as well. Moments of confusion would vanish, but so would the magic. Mr. Walter…has always been more intuitive than linear, a believer in capricious destiny with a fine, freewheeling sense of humor. The deeply romantic heart of Beautiful Ruins is better expressed by constant circling than it would by any head-on approach.
—The New York Times
From the Publisher
A monument to crazy love . . . Walter [is] a believer in capricious destiny with a fine, freewheeling sense of humor.” — New York Times
“Walter is a very, very funny writer and can do Hollywood satire with the best of them. But this is also a novel with a live, beating heart, full of sympathy for its characters and a gut wisdom…You’ll want to explore these Ruins.” — Newsday
“Walter vividly draws a world both tender and cutthroat, where ambition battles reality, daydreams fight doldrums and sometimes win.” — Interview
“A marvel, an absolute gem of a beach read that is both hilarious and heartbreaking.” — Huffington Post
“Expertly scratches the seasonal itch for both literary depth and dazzle.” — Entertainment Weekly
“Entrancing…Walter’s turns of phrase are as brilliant as his plot twists, making for a compelling, fun read.” — People
“Lyrical, heartbreaking, and funny . . . Walter closes the deal with such command that you begin to wonder why up till now he’s not often been mentioned as one of the best novelists around. Beautiful Ruins might just correct that oversight.” — Kansas City Star
“Beautiful . . . A shining, imaginative tale . . . Beautiful Ruins shows novelists how it is done.” — The Plain Dealer
“His [Walter’s] characters are long-suffering, prone to failure and sometimes at death’s door. But the verve and enthusiasm of this novel, from its let’s-go-everywhere structure to the comedy in the marrow of its sentences, are wholly life-affirming.” — Minneapolis Star Tribune
“A beautiful narrative . . . This writer is a genius of the modern American moment.” — Philadelphia Inquirer
“A novel shot in sparkly Technicolor. . . . reimagines history in a package so appealing we’d be idiots not to buy it.” — Library Journal (starred review)
“Well-constructed…quirky and entertaining tale of greed, treachery, and love.” — Publishers Weekly
“This is a blockbuster, with romance, majesty, comedy, smarts, and a cast of thousands. There’s lights, there’s camera, there’s action. If you want anything more from a novel than Jess Walter gives you in Beautiful Ruins, you’re getting thrown out of the theater.” — Daniel Handler, author of Why We Broke Up and creator of Lemony Snicket
“[N]othing less than brilliant, a tour de force that crosses decades, continents, and genres, to powerful and often hilarious effect....A masterful novel of love, loss, and hard-won hope that satisfies on every level.” — Ben Fountain, author of Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk
“Within a page-turner of a plot, these triumphantly vulnerable characters leap off the page to take up permanent residence in your inner life. The effect is so powerful that to be untouched by Beautiful Ruins might well be like having no inner life at all.” — Rebecca Newberger Goldstein, author of 36 Arguments for the Existence of God: A Work of Fiction
“A brilliant, madcap meditation on fate. . . . Walter’s prose is a joy-funny, brash, witty and rich with ironic twists. He’s taken all of the tricks of the postmodern novel and scoured out the cynicism, making for a novel that’s life-affirming but never saccharine.” — Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
“A novel with pathos, piercing wit and, most important, the generous soul of a literary classic. . . . Walter has planted himself firmly in the first rank of American authors.” — Boston Globe
“A literary miracle.” — Maureen Corrigan, NPR's Fresh Air
“Beautiful Ruins is satisfying and delicate, a spectacular story of love, frustration, selfish intent, and the patience of the human heart.” — The Stranger
“[A] high-wire feat of bravura storytelling. . . . [Walter’s] mixture of pathos and comedy stirs the heart and amuses as it also rescues us from the all too human pain that is the motor of this complex and ever-evolving novel.” — New York Times Book Review
“His masterpiece . . . an interlocking, continent-hopping, decade-spanning novel with heart and pathos to burn, all big dreams, lost loves, deep longings and damn near perfect.” — Salon
“It is a powerful and lush book.” — Selma Blair, the New York Post
“A great getaway of a novel.” — People
“Beautiful Runs is itself a showcase for Walter’s outrageous literary gifts in virtually every genre and style. . .No wonder critics have been outdoing each other with superlatives. . .” — Nashville Scene
“[An] enchanting novel. . . Sweeping effortlessly back and forth between Italy and current-day Hollywood, and between various modes of storytelling, Walters builds a world that won’t soon let you go.” — Paula McLain, author of The Paris Wife
“Combines satisfying, old-fashioned storytelling with a modern sensibility.” — Becky Aikman
Entertainment Weekly
Expertly scratches the seasonal itch for both literary depth and dazzle.
People
Entrancing…Walter’s turns of phrase are as brilliant as his plot twists, making for a compelling, fun read.
The Plain Dealer
Beautiful . . . A shining, imaginative tale . . . Beautiful Ruins shows novelists how it is done.
Interview
Walter vividly draws a world both tender and cutthroat, where ambition battles reality, daydreams fight doldrums and sometimes win.
Newsday
Walter is a very, very funny writer and can do Hollywood satire with the best of them. But this is also a novel with a live, beating heart, full of sympathy for its characters and a gut wisdom…You’ll want to explore these Ruins.
Minneapolis Star Tribune
His [Walter’s] characters are long-suffering, prone to failure and sometimes at death’s door. But the verve and enthusiasm of this novel, from its let’s-go-everywhere structure to the comedy in the marrow of its sentences, are wholly life-affirming.
New York Times
A monument to crazy love . . . Walter [is] a believer in capricious destiny with a fine, freewheeling sense of humor.
Kansas City Star
Lyrical, heartbreaking, and funny . . . Walter closes the deal with such command that you begin to wonder why up till now he’s not often been mentioned as one of the best novelists around. Beautiful Ruins might just correct that oversight.
Huffington Post
A marvel, an absolute gem of a beach read that is both hilarious and heartbreaking.
Philadelphia Inquirer
A beautiful narrative . . . This writer is a genius of the modern American moment.
Kansas City Star
Lyrical, heartbreaking, and funny . . . Walter closes the deal with such command that you begin to wonder why up till now he’s not often been mentioned as one of the best novelists around. Beautiful Ruins might just correct that oversight.
Salon
His masterpiece . . . an interlocking, continent-hopping, decade-spanning novel with heart and pathos to burn, all big dreams, lost loves, deep longings and damn near perfect.
Selma Blair
It is a powerful and lush book.
Daniel Handler
This is a blockbuster, with romance, majesty, comedy, smarts, and a cast of thousands. There’s lights, there’s camera, there’s action. If you want anything more from a novel than Jess Walter gives you in Beautiful Ruins, you’re getting thrown out of the theater.
Paula McLain
[An] enchanting novel. . . Sweeping effortlessly back and forth between Italy and current-day Hollywood, and between various modes of storytelling, Walters builds a world that won’t soon let you go.
New York Times Book Review
[A] high-wire feat of bravura storytelling. . . . [Walter’s] mixture of pathos and comedy stirs the heart and amuses as it also rescues us from the all too human pain that is the motor of this complex and ever-evolving novel.
Rebecca Newberger Goldstein
Within a page-turner of a plot, these triumphantly vulnerable characters leap off the page to take up permanent residence in your inner life. The effect is so powerful that to be untouched by Beautiful Ruins might well be like having no inner life at all.
Ben Fountain
[N]othing less than brilliant, a tour de force that crosses decades, continents, and genres, to powerful and often hilarious effect....A masterful novel of love, loss, and hard-won hope that satisfies on every level.
Maureen Corrigan
A literary miracle.
The Stranger
Beautiful Ruins is satisfying and delicate, a spectacular story of love, frustration, selfish intent, and the patience of the human heart.
Nashville Scene
Beautiful Runs is itself a showcase for Walter’s outrageous literary gifts in virtually every genre and style. . .No wonder critics have been outdoing each other with superlatives. . .
Boston Globe
A novel with pathos, piercing wit and, most important, the generous soul of a literary classic. . . . Walter has planted himself firmly in the first rank of American authors.
Becky Aikman
Combines satisfying, old-fashioned storytelling with a modern sensibility.
Richard Russo
Why mince words? Beautiful Ruins is an absolute masterpiece.
JULY 2012 - AudioFile
As the sole voice for a veritable smorgasbord of characters, time periods and plotlines, Edoardo Ballerini works magic with this audio production. Whether capturing the heartache of an Italian innkeeper or the frustration of a Hollywood production assistant, Ballerini lends just the right inflection and tone to some outstanding dialogue from Walter. There doesn’t seem to be an accent Ballerini can’t pinpoint or a fictional person he can’t animate. As the action shifts from the 1960s to the present day and back again, from actual plotted events to in-text novels or movie pitches, Ballerini does not once falter in his faithfulness to the overall story, one that wrestles with the essentials of dreams, love, and life. L.B.F. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award, 2013 Audies Winner © AudioFile 2012, Portland, Maine
Kirkus Reviews
Hollywood operators and creative washouts collide across five decades and two continents in a brilliant, madcap meditation on fate. The sixth novel by Walter (The Financial Lives of the Poets, 2009, etc.) opens in April 1962 with the arrival of starlet Dee Moray in a flyspeck Italian resort town. Dee is supposed to be filming the Liz Taylor-Richard Burton costume epic Cleopatra, but her inconvenient pregnancy (by Burton) has prompted the studio to tuck her away. A smitten young man, Pasquale, runs the small hotel where she's hidden, and he's contemptuous of the studio lackey, Michael Deane, charged with keeping Dee out of sight. From there the story sprays out in multiple directions, shifting time and perspective to follow Deane's evolution into a Robert Evans-style mogul; Dee's hapless aging-punk son; an alcoholic World War II vet who settles into Pasquale's hotel to peck away at a novel; and a young screenwriter eagerly pitching a dour movie about the Donner Party. Much of the pleasure of the novel comes from watching Walter ingeniously zip back and forth to connect these loose strands, but it largely succeeds on the comic energy of its prose and the liveliness of its characters. A theme that bubbles under the story is the variety of ways real life energizes great art--Walter intersperses excerpts from his characters' plays, memoirs, film treatments and novels to show how their pasts inform their best work. Unlikely coincidences abound, but they feel less like plot contrivances than ways to serve a broader theme about how the unlikely, unplanned moments in our lives are the most meaningful ones. And simply put, Walter's prose is a joy--funny, brash, witty and rich with ironic twists. He's taken all of the tricks of the postmodern novel and scoured out the cynicism, making for a novel that's life-affirming but never saccharine. A superb romp.
