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 contemporary Hollywood
"Why mince words? Beautiful Ruins is an absolute masterpiece."—Richard Russo
“A ridiculously talented writer.”—New York Times
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- Harper
- Carton Qty: 28
- Selling Territory: W
- 75,000
- PUBLISHING HISTORY
- Harper
(hc) 9780061928123 - Subsidiary Rights: UK, Translation, Audio: Harper; First Serial, Dramatic: John Hawkins Associates
- On Sale: 6/12/2012
- Fiction
- Tr 9780061928123 $25.99 ($28.99)
- 352 pages; 6 x 9
- Model ISBN: 9780061916045
Financial Lives of the Poets, The
• Jess Walter’s previous novel, The Financial Lives of the Poets was a national bestseller in paperback. It was named one of the year’s best novels by: Time, Salon.com, Los Angeles Times, NPR’s Fresh Air, New West, Kansas City Star, and St. Louis Post-Dispatch.
• The Financial Lives of the Poets is being made into a feature film starring Jack Black, produced by the team behind The King’s Speech and directed by the critically acclaimed Michael Winterbottom.
Marketing Campaign
. National Radio and Print Campaigns
. Author Appearances in Boston, New York, Portland, San Francisco, and Seattle
. Academic Outreach
. Online Publicity Campaign Targeting Major National Websites and Book Blogs
. Social Networking Campaigns on Facebook and Goodreads
. Book Club Outreach
. Coordinated Blog Tour
. Features and Enhanced Author Page on HarperCollins.com
. HarperCollins Newsletter Features
. Reader's Edition Available
Backlist
The Financial Lives of the Poets
Jess Walter
- E-Book
- 9780061965913
- 9/22/2009
- $12.99 ( Can.)
- Marketing Code: AV
Over Tumbled Graves
Jess Walter
- Trade PB
- 9780061712838
- 8/18/2009
- $14.99 ($18.99 Can.)
- Marketing Code: AV
Land of the Blind
Jess Walter
- Trade PB
- 9780061712845
- 8/18/2009
- $14.99 ($18.99 Can.)
- Marketing Code: AV
Also Available
Citizen Vince
Jess Walter , (None)
- E-Book
- 9780061959301
- 5/29/2012
- $8.99
Over Tumbled Graves
Jess Walter , (None)
- E-Book
- 9780061959813
- 5/29/2012
- $8.99
Ruby Ridge
Jess Walter , (None)
- E-Book
- 9780061959851
- 6/26/2012
- $10.99
Land of the Blind
Jess Walter , (None)
- E-Book
- 9780062036957
- 5/29/2012
- $10.99
Beautiful Ruins EPB
Jess Walter , (None)
- E-Book
- 9780062098085
- 6/12/2012
- $14.99
We Live in Water
Jess Walter , (None)
- Trade PB
- 9780061926624
- 2/12/2013
- $14.99 ($18.99)
The Financial Lives of the Poets
Jess Walter , (None)
- Trade PB
- 9780061916052
- 9/7/2010
- $14.99 ($16.99)
Extras
Quotes
"Why mince words? Beautiful Ruins is an absolute masterpiece."
- Richard Russo, author of That Old Cape Magic and Empire Falls
"Jess Walter's Beautiful Ruins is nothing less than brilliant, a tour de force that crosses decades, continents, and genres, to powerful and often hilarious effect. Has the movie industry ever been skewered so cleanly? Has Italy ever seemed so seductive, so heartbreakingly lush? A masterful novel of love, loss, and hard-won hope that satisfies on every level."
- Ben Fountain, author of Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk
"A novel shot in sparkly Technicolor. . . . reimagines history in a package so appealing we'd be idiots not to buy it."
- Library Journal (starred review)
"This is a blockbuster, with romance, majesty, comedy, smarts, and a cast of thousands. There's lights, there's camera, there's action. If you want anything more from a novel than Jess Walters gives you in Beautiful Ruins, you're getting thrown out of the theater."
- Daniel Handler, author of Why We Broke Up and creator of Lemony Snicket
"The beautiful ruins of Jess Walter's novel are characters so exhilaratingly human that you want to break out into cheers and sobs. Within a page-turner of a plot, these triumphantly vulnerable characters leap off the page to take up permanent residence in your inner life. The effect is so powerful that to be untouched by Beautiful Ruins might well be like having no inner life at all."
- Rebecca Newberger Goldstein, author of 36 Arguments for the Existence of God: A Work of Fiction
"[Walter is a] deft humorist and catastrophist. . . . dangerously astute."
- Janet Maslin, New York Times
"Walter is one of my favorite young American writers."
- Nick Hornby, Parade
"Well-constructed.quirky and entertaining tale of greed, treachery, and love."
- Publishers Weekly
"A brilliant, madcap meditation on fate. . . . Walter's prose is a joy-funny, brash, witty and rich with ironic twists. He's taken all of the tricks of the postmodern novel and scoured out the cynicism, making for a novel that's life-affirming but never saccharine."
- Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
"A marvel, an absolute gem of a beach read that is both hilarious and heartbreaking."
- Huffington Post
"Walter vividly draws a world both tender and cutthroat, where ambition battles reality, daydreams fight doldrums and sometimes win."
- Interview
"Lyrical, heartbreaking, and funny . . . Walter closes the deal with such command that you begin to wonder why up till now he's not often been mentioned as one of the best novelists around. Beautiful Ruins might just correct that oversight."
- Kansas City Star
"A monument to crazy love . . . Walter [is] a believer in capricious destiny with a fine, freewheeling sense of humor."
- New York Times
"Expertly scratches the seasonal itch for both literary depth and dazzle."
- Entertainment Weekly
"A novel with pathos, piercing wit and, most important, the generous soul of a literary classic. . . . Walter has planted himself firmly in the first rank of American authors."
- Boston Globe
"Beautiful . . . A shining, imaginative tale . . . Beautiful Ruins shows novelists how it is done."
- The Plain Dealer
"A literary miracle."
- Maureen Corrigan, NPR's Fresh Air
"His [Walter's] characters are long-suffering, prone to failure and sometimes at death's door. But the verve and enthusiasm of this novel, from its let's-go-everywhere structure to the comedy in the marrow of its sentences, are wholly life-affirming."
- Minneapolis Star Tribune
"Entrancing novel.Walter's turns of phrase are as brilliant as his plot twists, making for a compelling, fun read."
- People
"Beautiful Ruins is satisfying and delicate, a spectacular story of love, frustration, selfish intent, and the patience of the human heart."
- The Stranger
"[A] high-wire feat of bravura storytelling. . . . the surprising and witty novel of social criticism that flows from its lush, romantic opening offers so much more than just entertainment. . . . [Walter's] mixture of pathos and comedy stirs the heart and amuses as it also rescues us from the all too human pain that is the motor of this complex and ever-evolving novel."
- New York Times Book Review
"A beautiful narrative . . . This writer is a genius of the modern American moment."
- Philadelphia Inquirer
"His masterpiece . . . an interlocking, continent-hopping, decade-spanning novel with heart and pathos to burn, all big dreams, lost loves, deep longings and damn near perfect."
- Salon
"Walter is a very, very funny writer and can do Hollywood satire with the best of them. But this is also a novel with a live, beating heart, full of sympathy for its characters and a
gut wisdom.You'll want to explore these Ruins."
gut wisdom.You'll want to explore these Ruins."
- Newsday
"It is a powerful and lush book."
- Selman Blair, the New York Post