I think Beautiful Ruins by Jess Walter was the last book group we read collectively as a group before taking a hiatus... About a half-year hiatus. During that time, we "read whatever we wanted" and still came together as a group to discuss what we'd been reading, make recommendations, and just discuss books in general. As much as we all love books, it was a welcome variation! We have decided, going forward, to go every other month, reading as a group, and use the intervening month to read individually. This next book will be the Art of Hearing Heartbeats by Jan-Philipp Sendker.But, Beautiful Ruins. Collectively, this was another book at the group loved. Of course there were varying opinions. For example, one of our members loved the book so much that she subsequently read every other Jess Walter book she could find (and was very pleased with almost, if not all of them!) She was very impressed with his ability to write from so many different perspectives with so convincingly - and that was a common compliment that the group had for Beautiful Ruins as well.
The book follows several story lines - starting in the 60s in Italy with a visionistic young man who meets a hollywood starlet and falls in love, to the jaded 30-something in modern times hollywood looking for that perfect screen play to make her fall back in love with the industry, to the near-retired old director with an interesting past and an interesting perspective on success... and he does it all convincingly, interestingly, and well. It is one of those stories that bounces back and forth until you realize that it was actually a delicate weaving together of stories, with a satisfying end.
As a group, we highly recommend this book and hope we read more that make us feel as satisfied as this one did, in the future!
