And a Bag of Chips

Beautiful Ruins by Jess Walter has it all.  It starts off with Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor on the set of "Cleopatra" in the 1960s.  Soon one of the extras has to leave the set, to seek quiet in the seaside village of Porto Vergogna in Italy.  There, a young man, Pasquale, is realizing that he is the only person under 40 left living in the dying town.  Fast forward 50 years, and there is Shane, a young screenwriter-want-to-be who is trying to sell a story about the Donner Party, and Pat, a former one hit wonder who is trying to find one more hit.  Then slip back to Italy during World War II, and the scars that it left on all involved.  And there you have Beautiful Ruins.

The story is told through letters, discarded memoirs, chapters of books that never got published, scenes from plays, translations, flash backs, and flash forwards.  The same characters reappear from time to time, but frequently enough that you remember who everyone is.  In this way, Beautiful Ruins is similar to A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan, except that Walters actually tells the reader what year we are in. 

The Pat storyline also is similar to a story in AVFTGS.  Pat is a musician in his 40s, who found some recognition as a singer in a band 20 years earlier.  He hasn't given up, but the crowds have stopped appearing, and may even wonder if he is still alive, if they think of him at all.  His self proclaimed life theme is "There must be some mistake; I was supposed to be bigger than this."  Pat also brings to mind Nik Worth from Stone Arabia by Dana Spiotta.  In all of these books, there is a person who found some degree of fame as a musician in his 20s.  Even though he found a little fame, he didn't get as much as he thought he should have.  He feels that the public never really "got" him, even though he has been brilliant all along.  He is certain that his latest works are his best, if only someone would be willing to listen.  And then it happens, or maybe it doesn't.  But the hope is there.  Can a great musician find true critical acclaim and commercial success after turning 40?  Or 50?   It's a rock and roll fairy tale.  And we love it.  AVFTGS won the Pulitzer, and all three books, AVFTGS, Stone Arabia, and Beautiful Ruins were NYT Notables.

I also liked the relationship between Pasquale and the extra who left the Cleopatra set.  They speak different languages, but they are more honest with each other than they could have been with someone who they thought understood them.  Pasquale, as the manager and owner of the Hotel Adequate View, is in awe of any American who will come to his small village, and is especially taken with this beautiful woman.  Together they explore a bunker that was used by soldiers in World War II.  The bunker could have been left behind by a character from Mark Helprin's A Soldier of the Great War.  Helprin's Italy of World War I is not so different from Walter's Italy of World War II.

One thing that worked well in Beautiful Ruins was the final chapter, where the reader learns what happened to most, if not all, of the characters mentioned throughout the many eras of the book.  It could have been too contrived, but Walters lays out all the finales like he is reporting data, so it feels true.

The lessons in Beautiful Ruins are plentiful.  Do the right thing.  Live in the present.  Love the one you're with.  Accept faults in others.  Forgive.  Don't exploit.  For some reason, I think because I was so busy, it took me longer than it should have to get caught up in the stories.  I think that this is one that I'd like to read again.  It's a great novel that has something for everyone. 

Next up:  Flimsy Little Plastic Miracles by Ron Currie, Jr.

Still Listening to:  Zeitoun by Dave Eggers

Typical Book Group Report - 10

The Typical Book Groupers got together last night to discuss My Berlin Kitchen by Luisa Weiss.  I was expecting a low turn out, since the book was hard to get, but there were 11 of us there.  We wound up buying 2 copies, getting one copy from our library, and another copy from another library, and sharing all of them, so it worked out.

In truth, I don't think that we have ever talked about a book so little.  We talked a ton, but about everything other than the book.  Everyone said that they liked MBK, but no one had tried any of the recipes yet.

We were surprised how much we had forgotten about the Berlin Wall and life surrounded by it during the 23 years since it was taken down.  How can it possibly have been 23 years since it came down??  We remember the dancing on the wall remnants, but it's hard to remember, let alone imagine, that West Berlin was this little island of freedom within a communist country.  None of us had read anything set in Germany other than World War II stories, so it was nice to read about someplace new.

Next month we'll be reading The Descendants by Kaui Hart Hemmings.

Still Reading:  Beautiful Ruins by Jess Walters

Still Listening to:  Zeitoun by Dave Eggers.  Zeitoun is the story of a family living in New Orleans during the Katrina Hurricane.  Right now, I'm up to the point where they know that a big storm is coming, but aren't sure how much of the news hype to believe.  As I was listening, the news people in real life were going nuts trying to get us scared about  winter storm Nemo.  When did they start naming winter storms anyway?  It's just funny because I feel like Zeitoun does, thinking that the storm won't be nearly as bad as the news people are telling us it will be, even though I know that his storm in fact turned out to be worse than anyone even imagined.  So far my kids have gotten a snow day out of Nemo, even though we've only gotten a few inches of snow.  I'm not expecting anything of Katrina-like proportions, but then again, neither was Zeitoun!

True and False

When reading books by Geraldine Brooks, I have learned that there is always more to the story.  When I read People of the Book, I didn't know that the Sarajevo Hagaddah was a real thing.  I read all the way through March wondering why the cheesy family named their children after the girls in Little Women, only to read the afterward and find out that March was intended to be about the Little Women  family, but focused on the father.  So when I started listening to Caleb's Crossing on audio book, I wondered what the trick was. 

Caleb's Crossing is the story of a white girl, Bethia, and a Native American Boy, Caleb, in the late 1600s.  Caleb and Bethia both grow up on Martha's Vineyard, which was called something different at the time.   Bethia's father is a minister who is interested in converting the Native Americans to Christianity.  He attempts to do this by teaching some of the younger boys, as he would teach his own son.  Soon two Native American boys and Bethia's brother are bound for the Harvard College, as it was then known.  It was interesting that Harvard accepted Native Americans that long ago. Apparently after the Indian War of 1675-1677, known as "King Philip's War", they were no longer permitted.

About two-thirds of the way through the story, I looked at the afterward, keeping in mind that when I finished reading March I wished that I had read the afterward first.  This time though, I shouldn't have.  There was a big spoiler there, that I wish I hadn't read.  When I came to the end of the audio book, there was no mention of an afterward, which was disappointing.  In true Brooks style, the afterward reveals which characters were real, and which she created.  She also tells which plot twists really happened, which was a big surprise, because it turned out that the most outrageous parts of the story were based in fact. 

I didn't like Caleb's Crossing as much as I liked the other Brooks books.  It's probably just the stilted language of the time, but I was glad that I was listening to the book, rather than trying to read it.  I would think that a person who is really interested in the history of Martha's Vineyard or the history of Harvard might like this more than I did.  Brooks says in the blurb about the author on the dust cover that she lives on Martha's Vineyard, which might explain why she chose to tell this story.

That's one more down for the Off the Shelf Challenge!

Next up on CD:  Zeitoun by Dave Eggers

Still Reading:  Beautiful Ruins by Jess Walters