Skip to main content

Beautiful Ruins - Audiobook

About the Book

Beautiful Ruins - Audiobook

written by Jess Walter, performed by Edoardo Ballerini

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 50 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.

 

Carol’s Audiobook Editorial Comment: This book had been on my stack for a while now. I loved being swept into the tiny village in Italy as well as the glamour of Hollywood. Eduardo’s performance --- rife with wonderful phrasing and accents --- is a sheer delight. While listening, there were times I looked out the window and saw not the New Jersey Turnpike but the long sweep of an Italian shore.

Beautiful Ruins - Audiobook
written by Jess Walter, performed by Edoardo Ballerini

  • Publication Date: December 4, 2012
  • Genres: Fiction
  • Audio: 10 pages
  • Publisher: HarperAudio
  • ISBN-10: 0062268368
  • ISBN-13: 9780062268365