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Ten Days in the Hills | 
| Author: Jane Smiley
Publisher: Anchor
Category: Book
List Price: $14.95
Buy Used: $0.01
You Save: $14.94 (100%)
New (51) Used (83) Collectible (2) from $0.01
Avg. Customer Rating:  67 reviews
Sales Rank: 150135
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 544
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.7
Dimensions (in): 7.9 x 5.1 x 1.1
ISBN: 1400033209
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.54
EAN: 9781400033201
ASIN: 1400033209
Publication Date: April 8, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Product Description
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.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 62 more reviews...
 Ten Days of Torture November 11, 2008
I have stayed with this way too long and been way to patient. I am at 400 pages! I get the satire, but someone shoot me! You want to read good satire? Go back to the 1920's and read Hemingway's Torrents of Spring.
Anyway, after reading the reviews here I know it's not me. Jane, Thousand Acres was a gem. This book is on the other end of the scale. Tonight I am launching it in the garbage!
 Brilliant and Disturbing! October 21, 2008
As a long term student of how our culture prevents intimacy, I was amazed that Smiley was willing to present characters leading the typical American life. Lies, obsessions to avoid emotional pain, arguments with no meaning but breeding "trauma bonding," seeming closeness when in fact there is none. Be showing us this with characters who are the culture's view of successful, it is more striking. I didn't see this book as about Hollywood or war, I saw it as revealing a very painful truth about people. My own life is spent learning how to tell the truth, how to live it by examining the psychological defenses and psychological projections of past onto the present relating in order to make room for real intimacy. Reading these pages supported this approach to relating. I found these people lonely, isolated, and unhappy because of how they relate. They were very accurately presented. So for me this book was good to read, but I understand how others might not find it so, and even find it painful for unknown reasons.
Pewlitzer Prize Winner (it stinks) September 22, 2008
A book about shallow fictional people with money and fame. If I don't care about the real shallow people with money and fame, why would I care about made-up ones? Every once in a while, a rich and shallow famous person can cook up a decent wisecrack. Not so here.
Stories Within Stories September 2, 2008
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.
I must disagree August 17, 2008
1 out of 3 found this review helpful
I'm not going to start any name calling, or saying you didn't get it, because a lot of people make good points to why they didn't like the book, and I think that these points were with merit. But I, personally, just disagreed. A fan of Richard Linklater movies and the sorts, the idea of people just sitting and talking and having sex and talking and watching a movie and talking, really entertains me, and really, I enjoy it a great deal. I thought it was a bit long winded, but it kept my interest quite well. Max and Elena were wonderful characters that really seemed enamored/in love with each other. Delphine was interesting in the manner of the old timers decrees. The rest of the cast was just unique and interesting and I thought, from my little experience in California, very acurate, and very well drawn.
So, I really loved this book, one day I'll probably read it again and love it even more. Jane Smiley is great and I was introduced to her with this book.
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