I am not sure I understand this author. I would give this book 3 1/2 stars. The main themes seem to be love, forgiveness, and death. So many other minor points and themes are taken up throughout that it is a bit dizzying. /there are many characters who are related by marriage/family or relationships.
It takes a while to discover what is happening, and then a little longer to care about it. It is worth extra points that the book improves as it moves toward the end.
I think it is difficult to read this in the almost post Trump era. I do remember having some of the main concerns in the book at the time of the Bush presidency. So much has happened since then.
Smiley sometimes gets over involved in descriptions of everything. OCD is mentioned in the book and I do think it goes on with the author at times, for no apparent reason. Maybe this book could be just as good, effective, and make all the salient points and be only 350 pages.

BIG JANE SMILEY FAN. (I am amazed that it took me so long to read this book.) "Ten Days In The Hills" has a large cast of interconnected characters. I had to make a little chart at the beginning, when they were all being introduced, so that I could keep the relationships straight. The language and the imagery are so rich that you don't mind that sometimes the dialogue is a little precious -- every character, even the twenty-year-old man, expresses him/herself succinctly, picturesquely, perfectly. I loved that the thing that they all have in common is movies, and that references to classic movies keep sneaking in. I also liked -- sue me -- the dialogue about the Council on Foreign Relations. The book is also funny, but I have to admit I didn't (don't) get the joke about the guy who wanted to be buried with all his money.

I didn't dig this book. I found it boring, and, because of that, it took a long time for me to slog through. It was essentially a modern-day retelling of The Decameron, set in Hollywood. The one part I did enjoy was the discussion of movies, both real and imagined, that the characters participated in. And the book did make me want to go and rent some classic movies I've never seen. There is just something about Smiley's style, I guess, that I don't like. I didn't care for A Thousand Acres, either.

I love Jane Smiley, but only liked this book. I couldn't get attached to or interested enough in any of the many characters. The idea: a bunch of people, a sort-of family (a Hollywood movie director, his girlfriend and her son, his ex wife who is a legendary beauty/actress/singer, their grown daughter, the actress' mother, a neighbor, an old friend, the director's agent, and actress' bearded guru boyfriend...) gathered in one place and talk and explore relationships past and present, is an interesting one, or could e=be. It's set at the very start of the Iraq war in 2003 and there are a lot of arguments for and against the invasion. I just never cared enough and by day 6 I wanted it to be over already.

I thoroughly enjoyed Jane Smiley's book "A Thousand Acres," and so I picked this one up and gave it a go. This one I definitely didn't enjoy as much. It's filled with rich, vapid people doing vapid things. Maybe that was the point, but it still didn't really hold my attention very well. Kinda boring, actually. Sorry, Ms. Smiley. If your other books are as deep as "A Thousand Acres," I'll definitely read them.

I hate to say it but I always find Jane Smiley overlong. This book, modelled on The Decameron, has no plot as such, just a whole lot, a huge whole lot, of conversations strung together. She’s a very good writer of course but I felt this book could have been half the length.

I don't know why I forced myself to finish Ten Days in the Hills. Maybe I expected a meaningful ending. I might have to re-read 10,000 Acres to figure out why I gave that 4 stars.

This book. Parts were really good and some parts just really bad. The first 30 pages I almost gave up.

this books was just okay. It was so hard to get into at the beginning and I actually stopped reading it and then ran out of books so picked it back up again. The middle was better, but the ending I didn't like and wasn't sure why it ended with Zoe as she seemed to me to be one of the more minor characters. It seemed to me a better ending would have been Max and Elena.

This 2007 novel tells the tales of ten people over the first couple weeks after the U.S. started the 2003 war in Iraq. The people, all relatively affluent, some in the movie business, have varying opinions on the war, and on many other topics, but by halfway through the novel, we no longer define them by their opinions. Instead, through a series of fascinating conversations, the telling of interesting stories, and a remarkable catalog of sexual descriptions, we see these ten people as fully rounded human beings who never reach full communication with anybody else, but who figure out how to get along together anyway. Near the end, Max, the nearly washed-up film director, wants to take all ten along with him on a project, simply because he has enjoyed their company, which is pretty much my own reaction. I would certainly have continued reading well past the 530 pages devoted to ten days in their lives, even though the ending is perfectly satisfactory. Smiley's research for this book had to be enormous - she's particularly adept at talking about films, both real and imaginary, through the mouths of her characters.

A rare miss for the magnificent Ms. Smiley.

Max and Elena wake up to find that they have guests at their house. Friends and family have arrived. The book goes on to the relationships of all the people. I found that there was way too much talking