After reading a Christmas gift of Jane Smiley's essays called "The Questions that Matter Most," I have been following through with some of her previous titles. From the past, I remember her famous "A Thousand Acres" (Pulitzer prize) and loved the satiric "Moo" about a Mid Western Agricultural College probably inspired by her years at the Iowa Writing Workshop. "Ten Days" is unlike anything else I've read of Smiley's work which is exceeding varied. This novel is set in Hollywood at the beginning of the Iraq War (March 23, 2003 to April 2nd, 2003) and begins with the former producer/director (Max) and his wife (Ilena) in bed making love, then chatting, talking about movies and philosophizing. It is the day after the Oscars. They are in Max's house in the hills above the Getty Center. Through happenstance some friends and family invade their space for various reasons and all are together for ten days. The structure is based on "The Decameron" by Dante. The dynamics between the guests plays out as each of their issues come up during in their time together. About halfway through the novel, yall move into a luxurious over-the-top compound owned by a Russian oligarch because Max is being courted to make a movie based on Gogol's "Taras Bulba." On the back of the cover, in a square that we are warned "This Novel is Rated (Ravishing) R and is not recommended for children." That is indeed true for there are many ribald couplings throughout as would be seen in a French farce. I like a quote on the back cover "Amazing! Doctor Zhivago but funny." All the characters are flawed and emprisoned by their illusions as one would expect in LA. It is a romp – entertaining and exasperating, but Smiley's skill as a writer takes us through the action-packed ten days with panache. It reminded me of Thackary's "Vanity Fair' and Tom Wolfe's "Bonfire of the Vanities"both broadly social depictions of specific times with an ensemble cast. Status, power, and the foibles of human nature are themes that have universal appeal. Jane Smiley likes to write historical fiction even about Hollywood and the iraq War. and she knows how to do it.

Unusually for me I didn't finish this and found it a monotonous dull examination of a group of not very interesting people staying in a Hollywood home. After thoroughly enjoying Smiley's 1000 acres I was very disappointed and surprised at this poor storyline (if it can even be called a story).

Unfortunately, this audio book just did not keep my attention. Left off on the 4th CD.

A deeply bad book in which none of the characters convince and all of them talk and think like upper-middle-class white ladies.

A very bad start to my 2024 Challenge.
Ten days in the hills has taken me about three weeks to read. I kept hoping it would improve - it didn’t. What a group of sex obsessed navel gazers they were.

I just started this, I'm hoping for some Laurel Canyon-like Hollywood shenanigans combined with Smiley's usual sharp and devastating observations.

I just finished this. It was so much better than I thought it would be. I thought it would be good, but not great, and maybe a little boring or contrived or strident at times. It's very hard to write about contemporary events and have the story not feel dated or irrelevant by the time it makes it way to publication. Maybe that's the reason Smiley chose the Decameron as her inspiration. It's a formula that stands the test of time.
The first few chapters were kind of boring, with too much sex described with too much anatomical precision. But then all the guests start to arrive at the house and the book becomes all-absorbing in the way of the best novels . Whenever I put it down I was always a little surprised to find myself in my little cottage in San Francisco and not at the Hollywood Hills home of a famous movie director. They spend a lot of time talking about the war, arguing about the war, worrying about the war, and I got all worked up about it again as if it was 2003 and not 2008. Remember when anger and outrage at the Bush administration felt so new and fresh and urgent, instead of a chronic condition that you start to forget you have until it flares up again, but then goes away? That's how 10 Days in the Hills made me feel. But it also made me marvel at the complexity of relationships---family, friendships, romantic love. How do we manage to communicate with each other at all? Or rather, isn't it amazing that we're able to communicate despite everything we're missing or misinterpreting or are too busy to notice? Smiley is a master of the complexity of the domestic world, and by domestic I don't mean writing about women. I mean the complex fabric of daily life, how it's interwoven with the big and the public and the momentous sweep of historical events and the small and the private and the quotidian. For some reason it's so hard to write about war and what to have for dinner at the same time and make it believable, even though we all have to do that every day in our own lives, think about the war and decide what to have for dinner.
And make it funny. This book is funny.

Having not been able to get through "The Greenlanders" but having memories of having enjoyed "Moo" long ago, I was ready for this to go in either direction. Moo had struck a chord because I also have experience with being a faculty member at a land-grant school in the Upper Midwest. "Ten Days" resonates with me because I grew up in the Hollywood Hills. (Hm, maybe my problem with "The Greenlanders" is that I've never spent ten years huddling around a fire saying things like, "Bah! Woman! Tell Grimkorn and Høffelstådsdottir it is time for our evening meat.") Ethnographically, she is eerily accurate, even down to the incessant talking about fitness regimens, performative orthorexia, alternative religions, and the ritual recitation of one's exact driving routes (just like in the Saturday Night Live skit "The Californians," incidentally). I enjoyed it quite a bit, but, as in "Moo," I didn't feel that she really was getting behind any of the characters. Not that one has to do so—far from it; in fact, the best comic novels resolutely refuse to—but there was not that lusty amorality either that the best comedies of manners have. I even felt, perhaps, that Smiley was tossing this book out there hoping that someone would turn it into a movie? If so, let's hope she didn't offend any possible suitors by portraying them too realistically in this book.

Also, the set-up was contrived but self-consciously so: a disparate group of people, including uneasy in-laws, steps, and other semi-kin, tossed together in an isolated mansion for ten days. Their hosts, for part of it, are some elusive, mysterious Russian billionaires. I kept waiting for the dénouement, when one finally finds out what the Russians' deal is, but instead they simply evaporate one day. Which is fine, though. Life is like that. Some Russians just evaporate.

For whatever reason, as of late, I’ve found myself drawn to books that would be the paper equivalent to a new friend who is mostly awesome, but with some fundamental, irritating flaw—like a lisp, lazy eye or weird pension for having a repetitive word they use too much. For the most part the work is great, but there’s just something (they change depending on the book, obviously) that starts to grate on me on about page forty. Needless to say, by the end I’m frazzled and ready to return the book to the shelf or library.
Ten Days in the Hills is a primary example. The book was good—I often found myself impressed by Smiley’s ability to take a very contemporary group of people in a modern setting (L.A., which was fun) and evoke some really Wharton and James-ian feel. But, to take such an old-fashioned premise and give it a modern spin Smiley throws in some 21st century “ideas”—like recreational sex and drugs, neurosis, therapy, Freud and novel, “healthy” foods like humus—and pairs it with a ton of senseless BLATHER in order to create some movement and “filler.” So, despite the overall effect (a good book), it’s difficult to forget the unnecessary, silly details (what they ate, where they bought it and what L.A. streets they took to get there—even for an Angelino, the use of Sunset, Fountain and Laurel Canyon Blvd. became assault.)
This was also the closest thing to an “erotic” novel I’ve ever read. I read a few interviews with the author upon finishing the book and found she came to the same conclusion as I did—sex gets REALLY boring. That still doesn’t explain why she gave it SUCH a presence in her book, but I’m glad to know the whole world isn’t just WAY more interested and promiscuous than I am. This is a book where people keep vibrators in guest room drawers, where the “help” disappears quietly into the pantry to “suck each other’s tits” between courses, and most of the multitude of “guests” have played musical partners at least a few times which everyone in attendance.
But, in other ways, the “little things” that got so overwhelming were also interesting. When the party moves into a West L.A. mansion for three days, the attention to detail becomes profoundly fun—a little verbal tour of the Louvre, almost—and in terms of character development, the “little things” made the book the masterful work it was. Names changed as people evolved into what they were, culture was taken into account, as was history, affluence and geographical location.
The Jamaican Delphine and her movie start daughter, Zooey merge with the East-coast Jewish movie director, Max—Max’s now “typical” Midwestern transplant who writes etiquette novels and mentally stews about the war in Iraq, while Max’s mixed daughter Isabelle harbors some deep-rooted by insignificant mommy-issues and continues a long-term affair with her father’s agent. Toss in Cassie, who’s utterly old-Hollywood and functions as the “story-teller” and you’ve got a full house. In fact, the only really “under-developed” character seemed to be Paul—the transcendental yogi, who seemed to never quite get his chapter of “back story” to enlighten the reader into why he mattered or was there—(but he did remind me of a really deuchy guy I knew in college—so perhaps I was just hard on him.)
It was, as I’ve said, over all, a good piece of work—more than that, it was well-woven and interesting without being incredibly plot-driven—not an easy feat for ANYONE and very rarely done these days. Thoughts of “the great American novel” or at least aspirations of it seem obvious—but I was glad when it was over. Ten days of anyone is quite a lot, you know. After that entire story I needed to be alone. I also didn’t get the ending, but believe it or not, I don’t think it mattered much.

The occasional flash of insight, if nothing especially profound. Some interesting literary trivia and chitchat about the movie industry--but you know what they say about sausage making... This feels like the work of an academic salvaging some of their old lecture notes in an attempt to avoid the proverbial publish-or-perish meat grinder. I slogged through this 500+ page novel understanding that an effective story does not necessarily require a "plot" or even much in the way of action. And yet, somehow, the reader must be compelled to care about something in the story, if only to keep turning pages. Alas, these pages are populated by a vapid minyan of characters whose aspirations are as dull and pointless as their interminable, self-absorbed prattle. Nobody has anything interesting to say, and the world inside these people's heads is even worse: Reading this is like trying to cross a featureless desert only to find oneself going in perpetual circles, contemplating slow death from thirst.

"But a little after nones, they all went and refreshed their faces in cool water before assembling, at the queen's request, on the lawn near the fountain, where, having seated themselves in the customary manner, they began to await their turn to tell a story on the topic the queen had proposed."

-Giovanni Boccaccio, The Decameron

Jane Smiley is once again remaking classic literature with Ten Days in the Hills, a modern take on Boccaccio's The Decameron.

In The Decameron, an assorted group of ten noble men and women hide out in a country villa in the hills outside of Florence, hoping to escape the plague (aka The Black Death). They spend their time telling stories that are invariably linked.

In Ten Days in the Hills, an assorted group of ten (self-involved) men and women hide out in mansions in the hills outside of Hollywood, hoping to escape news of the Iraq War (circa March 2003). They spend their time telling stories that are invariably linked, watching movies, arguing about politics, and having sex.

Well, I wouldn't say that this was an easy read, but it was interesting. The commentary on the Iraq War was intriguing (especially since it really managed to take you back to that time, at the start of the war), the stories were very humorous, and the arguments between the characters were believable and entertaining. What kept Ten Days from getting a higher rating from me was that it wasn't gripping from beginning to end, due to a lack of flow in the stories, and it seemed to fall rather flat at the end.

Loosely based on the Decameron, and all about sex and politics. Not too shabby! There were times when I couldn't put it down. It follows ten Hollywood-types in the days after the Iraq war has just been declared. Very well-written, interesting political arguments, interspersed with amusing and juicy parts.


Then he said, "But I'm permitted to save myself."
"Are you?" said Delphine. "Are you permitted to promote risk for others and keep some security for yourself?"
"Well that's a natural human thing to do--"
"But we're not talking about natural. We're talking about guilty or not guilty. What you're saying is that you are justified in getting away with what you can get away with, right?"
"I guess, right."
"So in that sense you're in agreement with the administration, too, right?"
"In some sense, right. I admit that."
"So, since a lot of people around the world disagree with the policies you support, you are in more or less the same position as a German civilian or a Japanese civilian before the Second World War. Your ideas could work out, but they might not. Are you ready to pay the price if they don't, and you can't get away with it?"


..."So, as we pulled out of the parking lot, I said, 'I bet they live in that car,' and she said, 'The guy in the suit was a woman.' I said, 'Probably. This is Santa Cruz.' And she said, 'That's too freaky for me.' And I said, 'They're just lesbians, what's the difference,' and she said, 'They're homeless Wiccan lesbians living in their car with two kids. Is that a choice or a misfortune?'"

This is put together well, but is probably my least favorite Smiley. The web between the characters and how that all developed was great, but the emotional weight there for me didn’t support the length used to create that. Maybe more maximalistic than I prefer, or maybe I just needed more going on.