The extended family and friends of Max, a successful Hollywood screenwriter, accidentally spend ten days together, in relative isolation, during the time of the US invasion of Iraq. On the one hand, little happens, aside from sex (presented directly, unromanticized, with no embarrassment). On the other hand, the conversational interactions among hosts and guests lead them to discover aspects of one another and themselves, and you get quickly drawn into the lives, concerns, passions, and relationships of these diverse people.

Max admires "My Dinner with Andre," a powerful and memorable movie which consists entirely of conversation in a restaurant. This novel has that tone and that strength. The circumstances and the mix of characters lead to insights into the purpose, direction, and meaning of contemporary life and politics; into what makes a movie work and what makes a life "work". Max also admires "The Seventh Seal" and is tempted to do a movie based on Gogol's "Taras Bulba", and the talk ranges wide and far, touching on contemporary moral dilemmas, the business of movie-making, and the meaning of violence and death.

Some of my pleasure in reading this book derived from the fact that I, like Max and his girl-friend Elena, am of the Baby Boomer generation. I lived through the 60s and Viet Nam and all that has happened since then, and found it easy to relate to what mattered to them. It was also refreshing to read of sexual passion and love between intelligent and experienced 50-somethings.

I took forever to read this book but I think it was the nature of the book to do so. It is based on the Decameron, which I have never read, I just know that from what I know. The book had about a thousand characters (but only 10 days) and no plot at all, just a spinning of individual stories that all together added up both to a history and a moment in time, and a sort of paean to beauty in chaos. Set about the very beginning of the Iraq War and written not long after, it's enormously prescient about our slip into the new dark ages.

My typical response to a Smiley novel: she cites ten or twelve other books that look even more interesting than whatever I'm reading of hers at the moment. This book (a modern-day Decamaron (sp)) has the reader eavesdropping on several Hollywood residents in a palatial house over the space of a week and a half, shortly after the outbreak of the Iraq war (in Boccachio's work, the characters are hiding out from the Black Plague). Smiley said in one interview or another that she was going for an eavesdropping effect: we watch the characters argue, think, feud, have sex and basically live lives like people do, and watch their private and public dramas unfold. To me, it was a harsh reminder of the perils of espionage: other people's lives are just as boring as mine, so why eavesdrop in the first place? The characters are rich and textured, and I couldn't help but get especially interested in the feud between Zoe, a hot-stuff Jamaican actress, and her daughter, and although the debates about the war's exegesis are perhaps dated, they should never be forgotten (hear me Tso? yeah, you better run). But it wasn't enough to add up to a satisfactory read on my part.

All the talk about Taras Bulba, however, has me pawing the ground to get to the library and get a copy. It sounds like a Ukranian Braveheart.

There is an early renaissance work called The Decameron, by one Italian bloke named Boccaccio. The book is a thinly veiled excuse to collect a bunch of smutty stories under a thinly veiled excuse for a framing plot (ten young men and women escape to the hills outside plague-ridden Florence, and behave themselves with remarkable propriety while telling the dirtiest anecdotes over the fire). I had to read it in college. The concept of gathering anecdotes like this is one of those early european ideas (maybe harking back to Herotodus?) which I rather like; Cervantes did it, as did Chaucer, who probably borrowed from The Decameron, BUT I was not that impressed by The Decameron itself. As an anthropological collection of otherwise censored narrative, sure. As literature: eh.

So I suppose I wasn't entirely predisposed to like Ten Days in the Hills, Jane Smiley's "re-visioning" of the 14th century Italian work. All the same, a certain charm and involvement overtook me, and I enjoyed it, maybe despite myself.

The book is set in the Hills of LA, right at the onset of the war in Iraq, in (I think) March 2003. The participants are the friends, family, and other acquaintance of a semi-retired film-maker. And they tell a lot of stories. Most are not smutty. Instead, the author adds a bunch of sex between the characters. So the frame narrative is better contrived, and the stories are more interesting. Ultimately, I found the sex... well, gratuitous. The book is literature. It's not porn. You wouldn't read it for that, there's too much of stuff like people talking and doing other things. And in my opinion, the author's attempt at making a mature (I mean both about older people and less juvenile) take on sex doesn't really pan out. The focus on sex feels unwarranted, and drags the natural movement of the work out of proportion. For instance, there are several parent/child relationships. One of the key ones, a father-daughter relationship, gets almost no "air-time," so that the narrator's assertions that they are so close feels unwarranted.

Generally speaking, every since college (where I both read a lot of medieval lit and Joyce's Ulysses), I've been fascinated by the premise of adapting earlier works. In this case, I'm not enthusiastic about the choice of adaptation, and even then I don't think that aspect was particularly successful.

But the characters *are* interesting; their interactions and relations are also compelling. The dialog is remarkably flat and unnatural (this was accentuated by the fact that I listened to it as an audiobook), but if you can get past that, I think you'd ultimately get sucked into the lives and preoccupations of the characters in the book.

So while I couldn't say the book was perfect, I can say you will probably enjoy it, and not regret having read it.

Too many characters, too many words, an endless series of self-indulgent diatribes. Touted as a "glorious novel from the Pulitzer Prize-winner about ten transformative and unforgettable days in the Hollywood hills," personally I can't wait to forget this book, which is only transformative of my (previously positive) regard for Jane Smiley. First we're supposed to believe that Hollywood director Max and his live-in girlfriend Elena are going to wake up surprised to find their house filled with: Max's ex-wife Zoe along with her new guru/lover Paul, Max and Zoe's daughter Isabel, Elena's son Simon, Zoe's mother Delphine, Delphine's neighbor Cassie, Max's agent Stoney, and Max's childhood friend Charlie, and then we're supposed to believe they all stay together for 10 entire days? And at no time are there any personal assistants, housekeepers, stylists, publicists, media consultants, trainers, therapists, or body guards present? And all these ten people do the whole time is have sex and talk and philosophize, in grandiose prose, about the Iraq war, film, literature, history and art - without a word about fashion, products, or branding (with the sole and jarringly repetitive exception of Gelson's supermarket)?? Sorry, but these do not pass as the rants of convincing movie makers and pop stars, but too unmistakably those of a midwestern literary genius.

I get that Jane Smiley is passionate about her political views, but I'd rather have read or heard them in a non-fiction format than smooshed into this particularly densely written and unconvincing premise. There was so much, "instead of asking/saying X, she/he said/asked Y" as if to make us choke down double dialog volume! Why didn't Smiley present these people as literati, or classicists, or ivory tower dwellers, or midwesterners, something that would have rung true?! It's not just the California aspect; likewise the Jamaican characters were only Jamaican because Smiley told us so, not because she showed us anything Jamaican about any of them or let us hear anything Jamaican from them.

Not her best.

This was a little free library find and it took me forever to finish as it's a bit of a whopper of a strange but enjoyable novel. Beware the endless plot summaries of a hundred movies, some of which seemed fictional to me but I'm not a movie buff. It's also filled with sex, some scenes more titillating than others. Jane Smiley's a great writer and if you like her work you might love this. I had the sense this one was a bit of a pet project for her, but who knows. It was a fun way to pass a few weeks, at any rate.

I probably should have read the Decameron before I read this so I had a point of reference. I feel like I will have to return and write a real review after I do so, but I didn't hate this novel as much as most people did.

My initial reaction is to wonder why this book has such bad reviews, but it is heavy on rich and out-of-touch characters and light on plot, so you could be forgiven for finding it boring. Still, I loved the way it played with the themes of the Decameron, with life, death, sex, secrets, narration. I enjoyed recognizing many of the stories and the clever ways that Smiley wove them into her frame. I also really enjoyed her attempt to recreate the sense of retreat, but thought that was at least partially unsuccessful. The idea of the Iraq war having an immediacy to the Hollywood elite that the plague would have to Boccaccio's characters was a bit of a stretch.

I wish I hadn't wasted my time on this book. I've been in a habit lately of not finishing things I pick up (Madame Bovary, Falling Palace, Sophie's Choice) so I chose a big ass book that was well-reviewed and location-wise, right up my alley (oh LA how I miss you).

This book suffers from the same malaise Janet Finch's Paint It Black did. Author wants to write about LA, wants to sounds like she knows LA, picks what she thinks is a quintessentially LA book...and what you get is a self-conscious fizzle. I didn't believe that any of the characters in this book existed or could exist. Everyone was prefectly conceived, maybe too literary to be real. The author of books akin to The Idiot's Guide to X thinks, after a young woman drops her lover's keys in a toilet, that she would have had a spare set of keys on hand. Oh wow--an expert on being organized second guesses someone who isn't.

Then I found the rest of the characters annoying, uninteresting. I really had to make myself go back to the damn book so it wouldn't be just another book sitting unread on my shelf. Well, on the floor next to my bed. Which is just a mattress and a box spring also on the floor.

Here are some characters from Jane Smiley's take on the Decameron: narcissistic 40-something actress, self-possessed 50-something yoga instructor with straggly...ponytail, unnecessarily self-righteous 20-something daughter of actress and rich indulgent yet kind producer...come on man!

Basically ten people ascend to the hills for ten days and move from one grandiose mansion to another manse even more spectacular. I just don't care. There are fabulous things everywhere in Los Angeles County--ocean, mountains, people. But I know this already. Tell me something new, please.

Or if you tell me something old, then do it well. I yearn for the next John Irving.

There's a Nick Hornby essay on the perils of forcing yourself to read stuff that you think you should read. I agree with him--don't do it. Well, back in college it was fine, I struggled through a lot of books, but I got a good grade as a result. Now? I feel like I robbed myself of life.

Finally I can give 5 stars to something I've read this year. I was a bit worried at first...all that sex stuff and random stories and political arguments I've already heard, but I trusted the author would do something brilliant as she always does and she did not disappoint. This book was so much fun and I loved (almost) all of the characters. I got such an indulgent pleasure from lying in a hammock reading it for hours and hours and never getting bored. I almost cried at the end, mostly because I was going to miss everyone. OK, maybe I'm just unstable and it was just me and not the book at all, but I would highly recommend it.

I really don't know why I persisted in finishing this- not certainly for plot resolution- as it doesn't really have a plot. The narrative vacillates between long redundant descriptions of sex between various individuals, the prose lacking the silly titillation of bodice rippers or erotic evocations of DH Lawrence- it's simply repetitive soft porn to interrupt long, lugubrious discussions by pseudo intellectuals (that attribution is generous) which are irrational, boring, and not at all reflective of actual human discourse. (As a retired academic, I've sat through several evenings of long redundant discourse by real intellectuals- at least I learned a few things there). Not here. So we're left with an odd assortment of characters of dubious talent, intelligence, and emotional maturity. Who cares how it turns out? The ending was not at all of interest. If I could give it a zero, I would. A total waste of time.