This is one of those books that you don’t know whether to love or hate. How you feel when you finish reading it may not be how you’ll feel days or months later. The strength of the book is not what has been pushed as the book’s most outstanding feature. It all makes for a confusing situation in knowing whether to recommend the book or pan it because no two people seem to have the same take on it. I just spent a good hour reading people’s reviews of the book on Good Reads, and I am no more certain of my own feelings toward the book than I was before I read them.

Loosely following the format of a 14th century Italian book, “Decameron,” the book is intended to be a collection of stories that the characters share with each other about sex. (The Italian book is set outside Florence and the people are holed up in a villa, entertaining each other with these stories, during the days of the plague.) In Smiley’s book, there are 10 individuals cooped up in the mansion of a washed-up Hollywood director following the Academy Awards. They include the director and his girlfriend, his ex-wife (a half-Jamaican movie starlet) and her guru boyfriend, his daughter and his manager, a visiting friend who appears to be the only Conservative in the group, the ex-wife’s mother (who lives in his guest house), his girlfriend’s college-aged son (an aspiring movie maker), and his neighbor.

In Smiley’s book, the plague is replaced by the onset of the Iraq War, and this becomes a bone of contention and much argument throughout the novel. Movies are watched, and discussed. People argue about what to eat. They relocate to a Russian-owned mansion even bigger than the one owned by the director. And everyone has a lot of sex. The sex is supposed to be what sets Smiley’s book apart and makes it so daring, but I found much of it just boring and certainly no reason to recommend it.

What Smiley does do well is give us some real insight into the lives of these folks, who they are, how they got there, and what makes them tick. The relationships among the characters are fascinating and raise the book to a higher level than anything promised by the allusion to 14th century Italy. The characters talk and argue, and it is so real that at times, I found myself wanting to join in their conversations and make my own point to these people. Smiley also brilliantly bridges the gap between the mundane in our lives and the history that is being carried out all around us. These things make the writing and message of “Ten Days in the Hills” extraordinary.

I have to say that once I’d finished the book, I was disappointed, but as time has marched on, I’ve thought about it more and like the book better. So where does that leave the person who wants to know whether to read this book or not? I’m afraid you are on your own.

I was expecting to enjoy this book far more than I did. Rarely is there a book I start that has me so uninspired that I just want to throw in the towel, and this happened to me several times along the way, though there were moments when I thought it might redeem itself. I've only read one other Jane Smiley book, A Thousand Acres, and I loved it. She is really a master of detail. Perhaps I kept going because I was so startled by how thoroughly different the subject matter between these two books could be-- and how Smiley could have researched the subjects so intimately. I will likely read some of her other books now simply to see her range. But ultimately this book was pointless. The premise that a group of Hollywood types and their families would hole up for 10 days at random simply because they were upset by the onset of the Iraq War, and then would stick it out for 10 days (again, a random number of days), and along the way decide to change venues to an elaborately decorated hidden mansion likely owned by Russian mafia was all just far too much conjecture. I think Smiley herself must have gotten bored along the way and decided she had to switch it up to a new location where each room was more exotic than the next, only so that she had something else to describe. If there was meaning to be found in the dialog or some take away message, I didn't find them. Nonetheless, she's good enough at telling you what you are seeing that you can at least derive some pleasure from the voyeurism.

Honestly, I didn't like it and I didn't finish it. Which surprised me, because I read the Decameron as a teenager and liked it, and I like Jane Smiley generally.

The Decameron is all about stories, and so is this book. Just like the Decameron, the characters sit around all day telling stories, only in this modern version, the stories come from the characters' own lives and from the movies, in addition to gossip, apocryphal tales, folklore, etc. Like the Decameron, the relationships (and romances) among the storytellers evolve and change as they all hang out and talk. (Only in this book, it's a LOT easier to figure out who's sleeping with whom. Cause she shows you.)

But reading about characters talking about real life movies was very offputting for me. I mean, I live in LA. Also, in the Decameron, the overhanging reason for the storytelling was that the characters were holed up on an estate, trying to escape the plague. In Ten Days in the Hills, they're holed up because they're freaked out that the U.S. has just invaded Iraq -- the start of our current war. And honestly, I could maybe buy that parallel if it were the start of World War II, or something, but this war has never felt like the kind of event that would make average people hide out in a house and refuse to turn on the television or read a newspaper. And maybe the author meant for us to feel confused about the character's reasons, or to think abotu the nature of this war, or whatever, but it wasn't a compelling way to present the issue. It's a book that is too easy to walk away from and forget.

Against all odds, I loved this book. Normally, I'm put off by lots of stories w/in stories because I don't care for short stories. I love long novels, even better give me a saga or trilogy. I enjoy full immersion in places and in characters' lives (Suitable Boy, Forsyth Saga, Strangers and Brothers, Richard Marius's East Tennessee trilogy, etc.) With her L.A. Decameron, Smiley gives us a feast of characters and a tongue-in-cheek portrayal of our times that often sent me into gales of laughter. I listened to this in my car and found myself avoiding the drive-in bank teller one morning when the reader was deep in one of the many very detailed sex scenes. These aren't like erotica or pornography. More like real sex. There's lots to play with in this book. Characters' names echo mythology (Delphine = an oracle, Cassie = Cassandra, etc.), the Iraq war takes on Hellenic force as the uneasy backdrop, foods catalog character traits but also contemporary upper-middle-class foibles. I truly did not want this book to end. Loved it. Thanks, Jane, for making me smile. Repeatedly.

It’s an old trick: You put together a group of people in a semi-isolated setting such as a country house or a vacation retreat and see what happens. It’s worked in everything from Chekhov’s plays to Jean Renoir’s Rules of the Game to Stephen Sondheim’s A Little Night Music (and its source, Ingmar Bergman’s Smiles of a Summer Night).

Jane Smiley also has something even older in mind: Boccaccio’s Decameron, in which ten Florentines escape the plague-threatened city for ten days. She seems to have approached her new novel, Ten Days in the Hills, as a kind of “thought experiment,” letting the story grow out of the characters. What would happen if a pair of lovers, Max and Elena, were joined at his home by Max’s daughter and Elena’s son, plus Max’s ex-wife, Zoe, and her current lover? And what if you added in Zoe’s mother and three more of their friends? And set the novel at a time of political and social tension?

And what if you made Max a movie director, Elena a successful writer of how-to books and Zoe a famous movie star? And what if you put Max’s house in a spectacular hillside setting in Pacific Palisades? And instead of plague, made the threatening event the Iraq war, setting the novel at its beginning in March 2003? And made Elena a staunch opponent of the war, and one of Max’s friends just as strongly in favor of it?

What would you get? You know already: a lot of talk and a lot of sex. Something for everyone.

Or not. The trouble with the talk is that so much of it is predictable. It’s Hollywood, so they talk about movies and food and real estate and the quest for eternal youth. But Smiley has been an outspoken critic of the war and the Bush administration, blogging on both at Huffingtonpost.com, and the passages of debate between Elena and Max’s old boyhood friend Charlie are so filled with the by now too-familiar pros and cons of the Iraq misadventure that they bring the novel to an eye-glazing halt.

At least there’s the sex, which Smiley is generous with. Max is having a little dysfunction problem, brought about in part by the standstill in his career, so Elena is solicitous in her attempts to arouse him. Zoe is nearing the end of her relationship with Paul, a New Agey “healer,” so she checks out Elena’s son, Simon, a handsome and sexually adventurous young slacker who has recently shaved his head so he can play the role of a phallus in a student film. Simon is happy to get it on with anyone, female or male, who’s willing. As for Max and Zoe’s daughter, Isabel, she’s been having a secret affair with Max’s agent, Stoney, since she was a teenager.

At the midpoint of the ten days that these ten characters spend together, the whole ensemble is invited to the fabulous but somewhat sinister home -- Shangri-la crossed with the Hearst Castle -- of a Russian entrepreneur (read: gangster). The Bel-Air estate is filled with secret treasures, including a hitherto unknown Vermeer and what may just be the actual Amber Room that vanished after being looted from the Russians by the Nazis.

The Russian proposes to bankroll a film version of Gogol’s Taras Bulba that would be more faithful to the story than the 1962 Yul Brynner/Tony Curtis clunker. Max is trying to decide between directing this epic, to be filmed on the steppes of Ukraine, and a two-character movie about a man and woman talking and making love -- a kind of NC-17-rated version of My Dinner With Andre.

The satiric potential is obvious, and Smiley exploits it. Yet she also gives her characters depth and plausibility, which works against merely using them to lampoon Hollywood fads, excesses and attitudes. All of them, even the movie star and her guru, are smarter and more self-aware than we expect them to be, which makes it harder to poke fun at them. The ten days we spend in the hills with them aren’t wasted, and there are some brightly comic moments, some poignant ones (as well as too many dull ones). But as the saying goes, “fish and visitors begin to smell after three days.” Like the characters themselves, we’re glad when the visit’s over and we can get on with our lives.

This is a very unusual book. Not for everyone. More like being a fly on the wall, witnessing a variety of conversations, relationships and inner dialogue. I didn't care one way or the other for the celebrity aspect but I very much enjoyed "listening in on" the characters and their perspectives.

Well written, great sex scenes, and some humor! but otherwise I couldn’t care less about this book. Just not interested in minute examination of Hollywood life- one day at a time. Lost patience with the book and basically abandoned it- just paged quickly through until the end.

so boring

This is one of those books that while reading it you can picture the author typing with thoughts that they are being transcendent and clever but it comes off as contrived and elitiest.

I didn't feel anything for any of the characters in this book. Some tidbits within their conversations were intesting but all it made me feel was complete lonliness for my friends who have a lot more wit and charm. If I'm reading a book and I'd rather be somewhere else, the book is failing.

Additionally nothing compelled me to want to continue to learn their fates, their persuasions or the meaning of this entire story. I gave it my best shot and put it down way before the end. You might want to save yourself the trouble.

I listened to the book on CD, and sent this review to Library Journal.

Aging Hollywood director Max has a houseful of guests in late March, 2003, just after the second Iraq invasion. There’s Elena (his significant other, and mother of Simon), Zoe (glamorous singer, actress, and Max’s ex), Isabel (Zoe’s daughter—naïve, smart, and full of resentment for her mother), Paul (Zoe’s partner and life coach—ascetic, and something of a charlatan), Stony (Max’s agent, who’s been secretly carrying on with Isabel since she was 16), Simon (hiding from college, playing a penis in a student musical), Charlie (lone Republican), Delphine (Zoe’s Jamaican mother), and Cassie (Delphine’s friend).

Except for several sexual encounters, not a great deal actually happens, other than the conversations the characters have about movies, current events, and each other.

Russian investors want Max to make an epic version of Taras Bulba. Max wants to make a small, intimate movie, My Lovemaking With Elena. Jane Smiley clearly chooses the latter approach here, a slice of life emphasizing characterization. Reader Suzanne Toren gets a chance to shine, with a variety of voices and accents. Not as explicitly satirical as her academic comedy Moo, Smiley’s novel holds the listener’s interest, and most libraries will want it. --John

From Staff Picks Blog

I think Jane Smiley really wanted to write a trashy beach novel. She did. It is a fun read, but its over 400 pages, and it starts to feel a bit too self-indulgent way before then. It also feels a little like a San Franciscan trashing LA people's frivolous excess, which I resent. It is very well written--I've never read such high-end literary prose used to describe (so much) sex. Lots of scenes involve people over 50 having great sex, which I suppose is reassuring for many people. There is some interesting reflection on how people felt at the beginning of the Iraq War, which is well represented and pretty eerie, given that they (and many of us) thought the war would take days, rather than years.

This book had more detailed descriptions of mens' penises than any other I have read.

That having been said, it was an interesting read. It is about 10 people spending 10 days together in Hollywood at the start of the Iraq war. They tell stories, debate politics, analyze films, worry about the earth's future, and have lots of sex. It's philosophical and entertaining. It's supposedly modeled on the Decameron, but I have never read that one, so I don't know how to compare it. I feel like no two Jane Smiley books are ever alike, though. It seems like maybe she just has fun trying on various genres. If you like her other books, you should read this one too, but be prepared for something different.