Book #59: Beautiful Ruins by Jess Walter

I've finally gotten around to reading this book. I've been thinking about it for months now, because once you see this cover, how can you not want to read it? (Also--how can you not want to go there?) I've even checked it out from the library once or twice, but I let it run out and had to return it before getting around to it. So this time I was determined to actually read it. I picked it up last night and couldn't help but getting right into it, and powered through it in just yesterday evening and today during Dane's nap. It shouldn't have been such a fast read, but once I got invested in the story, I just couldn't help myself but to read it so fast. (I kind of hate it when I do that, because I tend to miss some beautiful long paragraphs that I just skip over in my haste to get to the action and to find out what comes next. It just happens naturally; I don't even mean to do it. When I catch myself doing it, I try to go back and make sure I don't miss anything, but I guess that means the author did a good job getting me into the story.)

This book had such a random, almost unbelievable storyline that mixed history with fiction and jumped into any number of characters living lives in such different areas of the world, in different eras the 20th century, in different industries. There was the unbelievably-surgically-altered movie executive, the rural Italian hotel owner, the Hollywood actress turned small-town theater owner, the trashed and run-down old band singer, the down-on-his-luck MFA/screenwriter trying to pitch a movie about the Donner Party, Richard Burton, etc. They were all introduced as narrators and major parts of the story, even though in the end, only two of them were the real main characters and their decades-long long-lost love story was the real linchpin of the whole novel. I loved how the chapters switch between narrator and format and time period, some of them back in the sixties in Italy, some in the modern day in Hollywood, etc. Some of the chapters were random chapters from other books written by the characters, etc. But it all worked together to help you figure out what happened to these people in Italy sixty years ago, and how the resolution is coming together now. I absolutely loved the story. I felt like all of the characters were compelling, and I liked how the author included some crossover between "real life" (with Richard Burton appearing during his filming of Cleopatra) and the fictional characters who are affected by him. I do feel like the resolution, the final chapter, wasn't as thorough and clear-cut and clean as I'd like it to be, although I'm sure that was a stylistic choice by the author. But this was definitely a satisfying escapist read that I'm super glad I picked up.