Listen free for 30 days

Preview

Pick 1 audiobook a month from our unmatched collection.
Listen all you want to thousands of included audiobooks, Originals, and podcasts.
Premium Plus auto-renews for $14.95/mo + applicable taxes after 30 days. Cancel anytime.

Beautiful Ruins

Written by: Jess Walter
Narrated by: Edoardo Ballerini
Try for $0.00

$14.95 a month after 30 days. Cancel anytime.

Buy Now for $34.95

Buy Now for $34.95

Pay using card ending in
By confirming your purchase, you agree to Audible's Conditions of Use and Amazon's Privacy Notice. Tax where applicable.

Publisher's Summary

Audie Award Nominee, Fiction and Best Solo Narration, 2013

The story begins in 1962. On a rocky patch of the sun-drenched Italian coastline, a young innkeeper, chest-deep in daydreams, looks out over the incandescent waters of the Ligurian Sea and spies an apparition: a tall, thin woman, a vision in white, approaching him on a boat. She is an actress, he soon learns, an American starlet, and she is dying.

And the story begins again today, half a world away, 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 a dozen unforgettable characters: the starstruck Italian innkeeper and his long-lost love; the heroically preserved producer who once brought them together and his idealistic young assistant; the army veteran turned fledgling novelist, and the rakish Richard Burton himself, whose appetites set the whole story in motion - along with the husbands and wives, lovers and dreamers, superstars and losers, who populate their world in the decades that follow.

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.

©2012 Jess Walter (P)2012 HarperCollins Publisher
activate_Holiday_promo_in_buybox_DT_T2

What listeners say about Beautiful Ruins

Average Customer Ratings
Overall
  • 4 out of 5 stars
  • 5 Stars
    16
  • 4 Stars
    9
  • 3 Stars
    5
  • 2 Stars
    5
  • 1 Stars
    0
Performance
  • 4 out of 5 stars
  • 5 Stars
    17
  • 4 Stars
    9
  • 3 Stars
    4
  • 2 Stars
    0
  • 1 Stars
    2
Story
  • 4 out of 5 stars
  • 5 Stars
    11
  • 4 Stars
    10
  • 3 Stars
    6
  • 2 Stars
    4
  • 1 Stars
    1

Reviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.

Sort by:
Filter by:
  • Overall
    2 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    1 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    3 out of 5 stars

Just can’t do it.


OK I’ve got an hour and six minutes left in this audiobook and I’m gonna do myself a favour and bail on the gripping ending. The story seemed.... ok? The narrator is quite awful. His reading tone rings false throughout- cringeworthy accents (American doing soap-opera English) and constantly lapses into extra-breathy ‘American cowboy poetry’ tone anytime he seems to think he’s supposed to be putting some feeling into it.

On second thought I’m going to seek a refund on this one.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!