August 2012
My suitcase is unpacked. I know that does not sound like a big deal, but after three conferences in five weeks, it’s a big feat for me. I still have piles of paperwork to go through with notes for ideas for our websites and a huge number of emails flagged for attention and follow-up, but having my suitcase unpacked is quite nice, like I am rooted here for a bit. It took 10 days since the last jet-lagged return to get unpacked. Instead of unpacking, I wanted to READ, sleep eight hours a night, and cook some nice dinners, all of which I never get to do on the road. I also wanted to eat some meals that required utensils after weeks where I was hitting multiple cocktail parties a night swigging down mineral water with lime (my secret to staying on top of my game while on business trips is not drinking liquor or wine) and finger foods.
—
—The Sunday Times, London
How many books do you typically pack for a week-long vacation?
August 7, 2012, 225 voters
Editorial content for Beautiful Ruins
Book
Contributors
Reviewer (text)
Put down the book you are currently reading and pick up BEAUTIFUL RUINS. Put it down. Now walk away. Walk. Away. Read More
Teaser
In 1962, a young innkeeper in Italy spies an apparition: a tall, thin woman approaching him on a boat. He soon learns that she’s an American actress --- and she’s dying. And the story begins again today, when an elderly Italian man shows up on a movie studio's back lot, searching for the mysterious woman he last saw at his hotel decades earlier.
Promo
In 1962, a young innkeeper in Italy spies an apparition: a tall, thin woman approaching him on a boat. He soon learns that she’s an American actress --- and she’s dying. And the story begins again today, when an elderly Italian man shows up on a movie studio's back lot, searching for the mysterious woman he last saw at his hotel decades earlier.
About the Book
The story begins in 1962. On a rocky patch of the sun-drenched Italian coastline, a young innkeeper, chest-deep in daydreams, looks out over the incandescent waters of the Ligurian Sea and spies an apparition: a tall, thin woman, a vision in white, approaching him on a boat. She is an actress, he soon learns, an American starlet, and she is dying.
And the story begins again today, half a world away, when an elderly Italian man shows up on a movie studio's back lot --- searching for the mysterious woman he last saw at his hotel decades earlier.
What unfolds is a dazzling, yet deeply human, roller coaster of a novel, spanning fifty years and nearly as many lives. From the lavish set of Cleopatra to the shabby revelry of the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, Walter introduces us to the tangled lives of a dozen unforgettable characters: the starstruck Italian innkeeper and his long-lost love; the heroically preserved producer who once brought them together and his idealistic young assistant; the army veteran turned fledgling novelist and the rakish Richard Burton himself, whose appetites set the whole story in motion --- along with the husbands and wives, lovers and dreamers, superstars and losers, who populate their world in the decades that follow.
Gloriously inventive, constantly surprising, BEAUTIFUL RUINS is a story of flawed yet fascinating people, navigating the rocky shores of their lives while clinging to their improbable dreams.
—
—
—Michiko Kakutani, The New York
