Did you know that we have a number of first and limited edition club books? Once a month the members of the First Editions Book Club receive a signed first edition of a new work of fiction by an emerging author who shows exceptional talent and promise. June’s signed first edition is Jess Walter’s Beautiful Ruins.
Sam recently interviewed Jess Walter for his weekly radio broadcast, The Avid Reader. You can listen to the podcast of his interview on iTunes.
Here is what Sam has to say about the book:
Beautiful Ruins, by Jess Walter, is literally one of those few books that you can’t put down. It is April of 1962. The catastrophic set of “Cleopatra” sets the opening of this novel. A dying American actress, an extra in the film, arrives in a town so small that it exists primarily as a rumor. Dee Moray, one of the book’s numerous protagonists, a beautiful blond, enters Porto Vergona and immediately smites young Pasquale Tursi, the proprietor of the adequately named “Hotel Adequate View”. A shared moment between the two creates the link that unites them and the book itself, together for a lifetime. Reminiscent of Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s “Love in the Time of Cholera”, the book’s magical narrative leads us deeper and deeper into the realization that the moments of our life, combine, or stand alone, to shape our very existence, our personalities and our fates.
Suffice it to say that this book enthralled me, and will you. Listen to my interview with Jess Walter and hear him explain the nuances of his work and the muse that led him to write this, which, along with A Visit From the Goon Squad are my picks as the two best books of the year.
Wellington Square Bookshop 