Interspersed here and there are pages from an unfinished World War II novel, a chapter of a rejected movie-town memoir and several scenes from a Midwestern community-theater play. One way or another, whether they know it or not, redemption - from years wasted, ideals abandoned, loved ones betrayed - is what all the major characters are chasing in this populous, craftily constructed, often hilarious chronicle whose action skips around in time and place between a more or less contemporary Southern California, a tiny Italian fishing village in 1962, Seattle in 1967, Edinburgh in 2008 and Sandpoint, Idaho, in the recent past. "Here for business or pleasure?" a car-rental clerk asks a would-be screenwriter just deplaned in Hollywood in the opening pages of Jess Walter's poignant, comical and marvelous novel "Beautiful Ruins." The hopeful scribe's quick answer: "Redemption."
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