"The
funniest and best novel I've read all year is Jess Walter's Beautiful
Ruins. Not many satirists can stop on a dime and testify with equal
power and intelligence to what is not, for them, a laughing matter." — Richard Russo
Jess
Walter's Beautiful Ruins is an irresistible romp through Italy in the
Technicolor era, when a starlet hooked up with the dashingly drunken
Richard Burton and charmed the townspeople in a tiny seaside village.
The present-day scenes are pretty snazzy, too.
