'Beautiful Ruins' isn't typical Hollywood novel, author says

Jess Walter's critically acclaimed new book "Beautiful Ruins" contains many of the characters and attitudes of the classic Hollywood novel — doomed heroes and heroines lurching from troubled pasts toward impossible dreams. The bestseller, generating waves of buzz this summer, mixes key ingredients of a recipe used by such authors as Nathanael West and F. Scott Fitzgerald.

By Danielle Paquette, Los Angeles Times

July 26, 2012