5:00 am Mon July 2, 2012  Book Review: Beautiful Ruins  Jess
Walter’s novel, Beautiful Ruins, is entertaining, but the work
seems scattered because the author has so many people and
narrative styles running through it that the reader loses sight
of a main character.  If the book does have a main character, he
might be Mr. Tursi, who has American-sized dreams as he raises
the profile of his coastal Italian hotel. In the 1960s, Tursi’s
life changes when a mysterious actress comes ashore. The
actress, Dee Moray, is on leave from the Hollywood production,
“Cleopatra.”  The story then jumps in time to contemporary
Hollywood, where we see Tursi searching for Moray much later in
his life.  What happens in-between comprises Beautiful Ruins, by
way of non-linear storytelling.  But instead of focusing on
these or at least a manageable group of characters, Walter
proceeds to give a host of other characters valuable space. To
mention only several: in the here and now of Hollywood, we meet
film-makers dealing with the fru