LEADER 02440cam 2200265 a 4500
001 284785
003 TNML
005 20141125101802.0
008 180321s2012 nyu g 000 1 eng c
010 $a 2011279056
020 $a9780061928123
020 $a0061928127
020 $a9780062207135 (pbk.) :$cUSD17.99$
020 $a006220713X (pbk.) :$cUSD17.99$
035 $a(OCoLC)794856577$z(OCoLC)821744098$z(OCoLC)861177865
035 $a797416
040 $aPOT$beng$cPOT$dDLC$dBKX$dABG$dJRS$dVP@$dCDX$dIQU$dFDA$dTWWZU$dYDXCP$dAU@$dNSB$dP4I$dTWTNM
042 $apcc
043 $ae-it---
050 00$aPS3573.A4722834$bB43 2012
082 04$a813/.54$223
100 1 $aWalter, Jess,$d1965-
245 10$aBeautiful ruins :$ba novel /$cJess Walter.
250 $a1st ed.
260 $aNew York :$bHarper,$cc2012.
300 $a337 p. ;$c24 cm.
520 $aA novel that spans fifty years. The Italian housekeeper and his long-lost American starlet; the producer who once brought them together, and his assistant. A glittering world filled with unforgettable characters. The story begins in 1962. On a rocky patch of the sun-drenched Italian coastline, a young innkeeper, chest-deep in daydreams, looks out over the incandescent waters of the Ligurian Sea and spies an apparition: a tall, thin woman, a vision in white, approaching him on a boat. She is an actress, he soon learns, an American starlet, and she is dying. And the story begins again today, half a world away, when an elderly Italian man shows up on a movie studio's back lot searching for the mysterious woman he last saw at his hotel decades earlier. What unfolds is a dazzling, yet deeply human, roller coaster of a novel, spanning fifty years and nearly as many lives. From the lavish set of Cleopatra to the shabby revelry of the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, the author introduces us to the tangled lives of a dozen unforgettable characters: the starstruck Italian innkeeper and his long-lost love; the heroically preserved producer who once brought them together and his idealistic young assistant; the army veteran turned fledgling novelist and the rakish Richard Burton himself, whose appetites set the whole story in motion, along with the husbands and wives, lovers and dreamers, superstars and losers, who populate their world in the decades that follow. Gloriously inventive, constantly surprising, this is a story of flawed yet fascinating people, navigating the rocky shores of their lives while clinging to their improbable dreams.
650 0$aHotelkeepers$zItaly$vFiction.
650 0$aMotion picture actors and actresses$vFiction.
650 0$aAmericans$zItaly$vFiction.