Jess Walter is the author of seven previous novels, including the bestsellers, The Cold Millions and Beautiful Ruins, the National Book Award Finalist The Zero, and Citizen Vince, winner of the Edgar Award for best novel. His short fiction, collected in The Angel of Rome and We Live in Water, has won the O. Henry Prize, the Pushcart Prize and appeared three times in The Best American Short Stories. He lives in his hometown of Spokane, Washington.
"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
An elderly Italian man searches for the American actress he saw 50 years earlier during the filming of the movie Cleopatra. Walter (The Financial Lives of the Poets) portrays an incredibly complex chronicle of contemporary American life in a global world in this descriptive novel of love, hope, greed, careers, and life. Edoardo Ballerini's (2012 Audie Award, The Land of Laughs) ease with the Italian language and his ability to mimic the speech of Americans uncomfortable with the tongue add to the ambiance and credibility while also pulling listeners into the story. Ballerini's calm, quiet tone and realistic yet varied male and teen voices allow listeners to discriminate easily among characters. VERDICT Highly recommended. ["The pop culture references and wistful tone will please Nick Hornby fans and build Walter's following. Not to be missed," read the review of the Harper hc, LJ 4/1/13.-Ed.]-Laurie Selwyn, formerly with Grayson Cty. Law Lib., Sherman, TX (c) Copyright 2013. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
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