Beautiful Ruins
by Jess Walter
(Harper Perennial, 368 pages, $15.99)
During the time of the filming of Cleopatra in Italy in 1962, a beautiful, mysterious American actress named Dee Moray arrives in a boat at Porto Vergogna, a tiny fishing village huddled in the cracks of massive rock formations on the Italian Riviera. Pasquale, a sensitive young innkeeper, watches the actress' arrival with surprise and awe. Thus begins Beautiful Ruins, Jess Walter's energetic, episodic, funny, decades-and-continents-spanning, stirring treat of a novel.
The story veers from Porto Vergogna during various decades, to the set of Cleopatra in Rome, to a recent Edinburgh Fringe Festival, to the cynical, empty goofiness of present-day Hollywood. The novel's all-over-the-place structure works to a tee, and it's a pleasure to watch Jess Walter (Citizen Vince and The Zero) as he pulls off a literary trick — the episodic jigsaw puzzle — that too many novelists attempt these days without a hint of Walter's masterful touch. The humanness of Walter's characters — Dee and Pasquale, as well as actor Richard Burton; a plastic-surgery-addicted film director (whose procedures "caused a 72-year-old man to have the face of a 9-year-old Filipino girl"); Pasquale's family and former girlfriend; a hapless mafia bully and a needy screenwriter – is fully realized and compelling. The characters' intense longings spill onto the pages, but when the pieces of the novel all fall into place, readers find that those yearnings and unlikely dreams go much deeper than the surface. Unlike many current American fiction writers, Walter manages to plumb the depths, so to speak, without engaging in the dreary navel gazing that dominates too many "book club books."
Beautiful Ruins justly reaped rave reviews from critics, and there are plans to make it into a Hollywood film, which is a delicious irony considering the livelihood of some of the book's characters. With its intelligence, humor and insights into humans' endless desires and quests, the novel is a moving, skillful achievement and has added to Walter's growing reputation as one of our most promising novelists.
Where'd You Go, Bernadette
by Maria Semple
(Back Bay, 352 pages, $14.99)
Seattle author Maria Semple knows her city, and she knows smart, satirical, not to say twisted, comedy. The honors she garnered for her TV writing for Saturday Night Live, Ellen, Mad About You and Arrested Development speak for themselves. Her first novel, This One Is Mine, was a funny, competent try at a conventional narrative. In her second one, Where'd You Go, Bernadette, however, she ditches conventionality and draws on her mastery of quick-cut comedy and dialogue (both exterior and interior) to full advantage, capturing and skewering our current cultural confusions and delusions. The result is one of the funniest novels in, well, ever.
Bernadette Fox, a Seattle wife and mother, misses her successful career in architecture. She's also getting pretty sick of her "enlightened" city. She's married to a Microsoft hero, her neighbors largely comprise an eco-conscious version of the Taliban, and her daughter's private school is dominated by super-rich parents who are just clueless enough to think that they know best for everyone else. Bernadette's growing ill will toward her Seattle acquaintances finally morphs into an aversion to nearly everyone; in fact, it's gotten so bad, she has hired a virtual assistant in India to handle details of her life, such as getting someone to run her errands.
The real trouble, though, starts when her daughter, 15-year-old Bee, aces her report card and reminds Bernadette that she had promised her daughter "anything you want" if she did well in school. What Bee wants is a family trip to Antarctica. Soon afterward, Bernadette disappears, along with conventional narrative.
Hoping to find her mom, Bee gathers a pile of letters, e-mails, FBI documents, secret correspondence with a psychiatrist, and an emergency room bill documenting Bernadette's set-to with one of the clueless school parents. Taken together, they meld into a hilariously snarky, pinpoint parody of the absurdities that pass for normal life in the 21st century.
Semple is obviously a master of the increasingly accepted process of mixed-media fiction, creating a tight narrative through unconventional means (last seen created with such power and skill in A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan). As other reviewers have pointed out, you'll find a wealth of ingenuity, wit and great timing in Bernadette, but you may be too busy laughing to notice.