Ten Days in the Hills

By Jane Smiley

Book Overview

NATIONAL BESTSELLER - In this novel set in Hollywood Hills after the 2003 Academy Awards, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of A Thousand Acres delivers "a blazing farce, a fiery satire of contemporary celebrity culture and a rich, simmering meditation on the price of war and fame and desire." --Los Angeles Times Book Review

In the aftermath of the 2003 Academy Awards, Max and Elena--he's an Oscar-winning writer/director--open their Holywood Hills home to a group of friends and neighbors, industy insiders and hangers-on, eager to escape the outside world and dissect the latest news, gossip, and secrets of the business. Over the next ten days, old lovers collide, new relationships form, and sparks fly, all with Smiley's signature sparkling wit and characterization.

With its breathtaking passion and sexy irreverence, Ten Days in the Hills is a glowing addition to the work of one of our most beloved novelists.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1400033209
• ISBN13: 9781400033201
• Release Date: April 2008
• Publisher: Anchor Books
• Length: 544 Pages
• Weight: 0.89 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 5.2" x 8.0"

Customer Reviews

The Unpredictability of Life and Futility of Fear

Jane Smiley’s Ten Days in the Hills reads more like an engrossing play than a novel. It unfolds almost entirely through dialogue among a colorful cast of relatives, friends, and acquaintances. Set in the secluded hills of Los Angeles during the early days of the Iraq War, the story brilliantly examines how each character’s beliefs, fears, and ambitions reflect their personal histories and social positions. The characters’ varied views on the war—ranging from alarmist predictions of World War III to naïve optimism—resonate with hindsight, making one question how our current anxieties may appear retrospectively. Smiley masterfully explores the unpredictability of life, revealing the futility of over-investing in fear or certainty. The result is a thought-provoking meditation on the nature of human existence. Bad things happen, good things happen, and life continues. This novel encourages readers to embrace the present and live fully without succumbing to the weight of foreboding.

Stories Within Stories

In Ten Days in the Hills, a group of characters linked by family relationships, love, and friendship hang out together in a comfortable house, and later an opulent mansion, in Los Angeles, during the opening days of the American war in Iraq. They talk to each other, make love, prepare and eat meals, and watch movies. The book is composed of stories - the story of their time together, and within that the stories of each person, of their connections with one another, of their own private experiences, and of the films they've seen or imagined. Jane Smiley has always been adventurous, setting out to write every type of novel that exists, and by now she has completed the list. An expert story teller, she's interested in how and why people tell stories, and the ways that we use stories to understand our lives and the world we share. Ten Days defies the expectations of many readers by presenting an undramatic central narrative, while the conflicts and passions of the book are all about stories. At the center is the Iraq war, which the characters argue about a great deal, and seek to understand in varied ways. More profoundly than the question of whether the war is justified - Smiley leaves her readers in no doubt where she stands - is the question of how individuals struggle to come to terms with the actions of their governments. Should we protest, or should we accept misguided government and militarism as unavoidable parts of the human experience? Why do we make those choices? Throughout the book, characters seek to define what the story really is and how to understand it. Isabel and her mother Zoe have very different stories about their history. Charlie and Elena have conflicting stories about the war. Max can't decide whether to make an epic film set in the Ukraine, or an intimate film set in his bedroom. Simon seeks experience and has little interest in stories, though by the end of the book he's told one or two himself. Delphine seems powerful because she never tells stories about herself. Stoney, caught in grief, tells endless stories about his father. This is where the action is - in the telling of the story, in making meaning. Those who look carefully may enjoy the richness and complexity of this book. I certainly did.

superb!

I was captured by page one. A sunny morning, white sheets, two naked bodies of lovers comfortable with themselves and each other set the mood perfectly for the story to come. This is not a book heavy on plot and twists. It's a tale of relationships between friends and family, watched by a mature narrator who has the time to stop and admire dew drops captured on leaves. If you are the sort of person who reads to find out what happens next, you will not appreciate this delicate web. If you read fiction to feel, to empathize, to expand your emotional core, then you will love it as much as I did.

It makes you think...

A very good book. I'm concerned that many of the reviewers never gave the book a chance. So you didn't think the book was scintillating - that doesn't make it worth only one star.

I love Jane Smiley

I love this author. I awaited the publication of this book with the anticipation that I would be spending time in the company of a master. I was not disappointed. I enjoyed the characters and the setting. The tales that are told are entertaining - much has been made of the sexual content but it did not strike me as gratuitous. And the political setting, the background of the war in Iraq shading the obsession or avoidance of whoever was addressing us, well, as a fan of Ms. Smiley's blogs, I was glad to hear the nuances of voices addressing our times. It is difficult to write a book that is contemporary - there are a lot of landmines in doing that. This one is of the moment, and yet it will be read in the future for the feel of what it is like to live now.