Beautiful Ruins in Ask Jess Walter

Jul 07, 2012 Mimi V rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction, favorites, 2012

Jess Walter is one of the authors 'recommended' to me by one of my favorite authors, Nick Hornby. Hornby wrote (and writes again) a column for The Believer magazine, listing books he's bought that month, books he's read, and reviews. he reviewed Jess Walter's Citizen Vince and i read the book as a result. i've since then read all of Jess Walter's novels. thanks, Nick!

as much as i loved The Zero, Citizen Vince, and Over Tumbled Graves, Beautiful Ruins is by far my favorite book by Jess Walter, an ...more

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Jul 30, 2012 Debbie Robson rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

What a read! Beautiful Ruins contains so much of Hollywood – figuratively and literally. We have the third person narrative in multiple timelines. We have an excised first chapter of a biography. We have a play, a short story, a pitch, a pass that breaks a Hollywood contract and more than anything else we have an insider’s look at how a lot of business is done in tinseltown. All these different narrative forms blend to create a tale of lost love and wasted lives. (Or are they wasted? Walter also ...more

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Jun 25, 2012 su rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Wow! Virtuoso writing. You can tell Jess Walter is a master craftsman because he has molded this trifling of a tale into a work of art using no sleights of hand or fancy costuming. Instead, he uses the simpler but heftier tool of good old fashioned insight. What he accomplishes through extraordinary characterization compels the reader into a heart rending journey of nothing less than what it means to be human.

The story itself: a 20-something Italian man living an overly sheltered life in remote ...more

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Jul 02, 2012 Debbie rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Finding an author you love is kinda like finding a good romantic partner. You put a similar trust in fiction writers that you do in significant others, that they won’t be wasting your time if you invest in them, even if you’re really not sure about where this book (or relationship) is going. And sometimes you’re pleasantly surprised, and sometimes it all just doesn’t work out for anybody.
That’s the way I feel about Jess Walter. He’s got a voice that I just…get. I know, cheese much? But he write Finding an author you love is kinda like finding a good romantic partner. You put a similar trust in fiction writers that you do in significant others, that they won’t be wasting your time if you invest in them, even if you’re really not sure about where this book (or relationship) is going. And sometimes you’re pleasantly surprised, and sometimes it all just doesn’t work out for anybody.
That’s the way I feel about Jess Walter. He’s got a voice that I just…get. I know, cheese much? But he writes in a way that’s self-deprecating, and somewhat depressed, but not because everything is so awful, but because there’s as much joy and loveliness in the world as there is just plain sh*t. And that’s pretty similar to the way I feel.
I fell in love with his writing in “The Financial Lives of the Poets,” which had about the most dead-on descriptions of the atmosphere of the U.S. right after the bottom fell out of the housing industry, a time that also happened to coincide with the end of journalism as we know it.
So after that, he’s got an “I’m yours” from me. With that said, I was really leery about his latest, “Beautiful Ruins.” The story didn’t sound like anything I’d be interested in, especially because it’s described on the blurb as being a “roller coaster of a novel” about “husbands and wives, lovers and dreamers, superstars and losers.” Yikes.
To put me off even further, the novel is set in such idealized places like a 1960s small fishing village in Italy and present day Hollywood…two places I could really give a crap about because hasn’t so much been written about these settings already?
But what makes this a delight to read are the numerous little stories going on all at once, in different time periods, and how they come together to not have a huge emotional ending, but to give the reader a sense of accomplishment. I know that doesn’t sound super exciting, but in a time where I’ve been thinking a lot about how the simple moral choices we make in our lives send ripples affecting where we end up and how happy we are with ourselves, and if we are able or not to look at ourselves in the mirror…this kind of story resonated with me.
One of the themes is taking miraculous efforts to reconnect with people who have a huge impact on you. However, this kind of story—struggling to find people decades later—is probably one that won’t be plausible in the near future and may not even be plausible now. Everyone can find everybody on the Internet these days. Example: I once took an overnight train from Albuquerque to L.A. when I was 21, and I ended up talking all night long to a young guy who was one of the train conductors (yes, just talking—one of those long meaning of life conversations you tend to have when you are 21). We exchanged information in the morning and I held on to his card for a long time, then eventually threw it out. He ended up finding me on FaceBook about a year and a half ago and I was kinda creeped out…so I declined his friend request. That’s why life doesn’t imitate art (*Debbie Downer sound* Wah-wah).
I did knock a star off because of the character of the son, Pat. He was really one dimensional and his story so druggy-rockstar-destructive-blah, that I felt like I was reading a Jonathan Franzen novel in those parts. Jess Walter, you can do better than that! It’s okay, though, I’ll still read your next book.
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Jun 18, 2012 Amy Keyishian rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Lovely lovely lovely

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Jul 06, 2012 Bonnie rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

I didn't know what to make of this book at first, it starts so lovely and quietly. The writing is so good. the story jumps around in time and place and introduces one new character after another but each interweaving story is so good that it works in the best way. If I had to describe this book in two words, they would be: crazily perfect.
This book is like life, it involves many lives, many friends, many stories that all come together in the end. He wraps it up flawlessly not in a hurried way bu ...more

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Sep 22, 2012 Cheri rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Loved the book. I liked skipping from one character to another and from one time to another. It kept the book interesting.

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Jul 31, 2012 Christina rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

This is one of those works where you start crying about 50 pages before the end, where you relate to the character who says, "I have TOTALLY wasted my life." The kind where, when the kids are fighting, you wish them both luck and lock yourself in the bathroom in a hot bath to read. The kind where your eyes consume words -- actually CONSUME them -- in the desperate, rapid bid to learn what happens next. And the kind that leaves you so, so empty when you finish, because the story has been told. ...more

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Jun 19, 2012 Matthew rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: all-time-favorites, fiction, lit-shit, 2012, modern-epic

Yet again, more evidence that quietly, Jess Walter is establishing himself as one of the best authors out there. Lovely and brilliant and very close to perfect.

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