On his Facebook page, former SR colleague Jess Walter ("The Financial Lives of Poets") writes: "If I could link to only one review, I'd choose this one (by Steve Almond, Boston Globe): "Jess Walter’s new book, 'Beautiful Ruins,' opens with a lonely Italian hotelier named Pasquale Tursi catching sight of an American starlet, who has come to stay in his tiny coastal village. He falls instantly and hopelessly in love. It’s an absurd notion, he knows, but he can’t help feeling that he’s summoned this vision “from old bits of cinema and books, from the lost artifacts and ruins of his dreams, from his epic, enduring solitude . . . Life, he thought, is a blatant act of imagination. This last phrase aptly describes Walter’s audacious sixth novel, which weds the grand dramatic impulses of the cinematic blockbuster to the psychological interiority of high literary art. The result is a page-turner that doubles as an elegant meditation on fame, desire, duty, and fate." More here.

• SR reviews: A 'sweeping' departure from comfort zone/Jim Kershner, and: For Walter, inspiration behind 'Beautiful Ruins' began on Italy trip/Carolyn Lamberson

Question: How many of Jess Walter's books have you read? Which did you like best?