Beautiful Ruins: A Novel

The acclaimed, award-winning author of the national bestseller The Financial Lives of the Poets returns with his  funniest, most romantic, and most purely enjoyable novel yet: the story of an almost-love affair that begins on the Italian coast in 1962 . . . and is rekindled in Hollywood fifty years later.  

“Why mince words? Beautiful Ruins is an absolute masterpiece.” —Richard Russo

“A ridiculously talented writer.” —New York Times
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The story begins in 1962. On the sun-drenched Italian coastline, a young innkeeper looks out over the incandescent waters of the Ligurian Sea and spies a tall, thin woman approaching him on a boat. She is an actress, an American starlet, and she is dying. And the story begins again today 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, Walter introduces us to the tangled lives of unforgettable characters. Gloriously inventive, constantly surprising, Beautiful Ruins is a story of flawed yet fascinating people, navigating the rocky shores of their lives while clinging to their improbable dreams.

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“Ballerini’s handling of this fantastically complex narration is so accomplished you keep forgetting that it’s a performance. He’s called upon to speak both native Italian and the clumsy speech of Americans with an uncertain grasp of the language...[Ballerini] is a true collaborator, and with Beautiful Ruins he delivers the best narration I’ve heard all year.” --Laura Miller - Salon

“Everyone’s been raving to me about this novel, so I started listening to the audiobook on a recent road trip. It’s a big, involving story that skips back and forth in time, moving from an Italian seaside village in the early sixties to modern-day Hollywood. Actor Edoardo Ballerini reads it brilliantly, nailing all the regional accents and sounding so much like Richard Burton (who makes an extended cameo) that you can almost smell the liquor on his breath. Guaranteed to keep you awake behind the wheel.” - People