Ten Days in the Hills

Written by Jane Smiley

Narrated by Suzanne Toren

On the morning after the 2003 Academy Awards, Max, an Oscar-winning writer/director whose fame has waned, and his lover, Elena, are in bed, still groggy from last night's red-carpet festivities. They are talking about movies, talking about love, talking about the just-begun war in Iraq. But their house is full of guests demanding attention.

Gathered downstairs are ex-wives, daughters, agents, lovers, and a coterie of others. Over the next 10 days they share their stories of Hollywood past and present, their fears provoked by the Iraq war; they watch films in Max's luxury screening room; they gossip by the swimming pool and tussle in the many bedrooms as the tension mounts and sparks fly.

• Language: English
• Publisher: W. F. Howes Ltd Audio
• Release date: Nov 1, 2007
• ISBN: 9781407411866

Jane Smiley

Jane Smiley is a novelist and essayist. Her novel A Thousand Acres won the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award in 1992, and her novel The All True Travels and Adventures of Lidie Newton won the 1999 Spur Award for Best Novel of the West. She has been a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters since 1987. Her novel Horse Heaven was short-listed for the Orange Prize in 2002, and her novel, Private Life, was chosen as one of the best books of 2010 by The Atlantic, The New Yorker, and The Washington Post.

Reviews for Ten Days in the Hills

[binniebee · Rating: 1 out of 5 stars]

I suffered through half the book before reading other reviews (on Amazon.com) and finding that the book never gets better. So I did not waste any more time on it. This is an EXTREMELY rare thing for me to do. I almost never give up on a book no matter how disappointing it is.

[tronella_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I was a little put off at first by the fact that every chapter had a sex scene for no apparent reason, but really the main point of this book was conversations. And even the sex was mostly just to give the characters something to do while complaining about the Iraq war. This book has a bunch of about loosely-related people staying in the same house in Hollywood, mostly just talking about movies and politics and their shared histories. It was very relaxing to read. :)

[jenneb_2 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

It wasn't exactly Moo (which I LOVE), but I still enjoyed it.
It was kind of like a Judith Krantz novel but with fancier writing and a political agenda. And don't get me wrong, I am a HUGE fan of Judith Krantz.

[tanyatomato · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

This story is not for everyone, and in some parts not for me, but I think Jane Smiley has brilliant introspection with her characters and a lovely way of emoting what is difficult to make come across on a page in a book.

[jaynee_9 · Rating: 1 out of 5 stars]

I wish I could give this a "nothing" rating - this book is horribly boring. I should have known, given one character's penchant for "My Dinner With Andre" which is arguably the most boring movie ever made, that this would follow suit.

[nx74defiant · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

The characters talk and have sex. Nothing really happens. I was surprised how political it was. There is a lot of talk about the Iraq war.

[gwendolyndawson · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

A meandering conversation between various individuals staying a house in the hills of L.A. The book is almost exclusively dialog, most of it believable. Relationships are depicted warmly and sweetly, but the book is quite tedious overall.

[periodista_1 · Rating: 1 out of 5 stars]

Glancing at the reviews on Amazon--ranging, btw, from "I didn't finish" to very negative--I realized that for some people, this would be their first Jane Smiley novel! After which, they would never get close to one again.So, please, don't start with this one. Even if you're a big fan, you might not want to bother. My favorite, The Age of Grief, isn't one of her best known, I think. But it's a showcase for her sensitivity to very delicate feelings, to how cruelties and slights within the family reverberate through the years--in particular how the hurts of childhood manifest in the adults.But I think Moo or A Thousand Acres or In Good Faith might be better first books because they display how good she is at sketching characters and their families, researching and conveying how an industry (a large family farm, real estate) works, capturing the zeigeist of an era (that would be Good Faith) and then making it all a backdrop to big themes. No one is ever going to call Jane Smiley a chicklit writer.I don't think I have to go into what's so tedious about this book, since others surely do. And I didn't even get to the explicit sex scenes--not something Smiley has been much known for.But after seeing the mess of Ten Days, I will be cautious about reading any other novels Smiley has written since moving to California. Something about the move seems to have made her soft in the head. Maybe it was the money that came with the movie version of A Thousand Acres? The movie itself and coming in contact with people who had made too much money from doing and thinking very little?When writing most of her earlier books, Smiley was also living and teaching in Iowa. Maybe the earliest were written somewhere else, but it was a place like Pennsylvania or upstate New York or Ohio--somewhere populated by thinking, feeling, worrying, working human beings.

[bobbieharv · Rating: 1 out of 5 stars]

I turned all the pages, but skimmed most of it and finally had to stop.Very dull people having very dull sex and interminable conversations about too many movies. Could have used severe pruning. Highly disappointing.

[stensvaag_1 · Rating: 1 out of 5 stars]

I like Jane Smiley, and would like to see her succeed, but this book was tedious for me. I was unable to care about any of the characters—a gaggle of rich Hollywood types gathered for ten days of navel gazing. I made it through to the end, but it was a struggle.

[melorak-374565 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I appreciated this book because it was really well written but I didn't like it. It was sort of like My Dinner with Andre— a movie which is referenced in the book — but with a handful of movie industry-related characters instead of two guys, and everyone is very philosophical about everything, or at least constrained with a good deal of interior thinking which of course is the point but nonetheless not much fun to read. Oh the banality of banality. There are some funny parts though, lots of movie references, and if Bergman's The Seventh Seal is a favorite movie you will love this.

[equestrienne · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

I read it; it was okay, but not my favorite Jane Smiley book, not even in the top 5. It was well written enough to see me through to the last page. It is not one of the Smiley books that I will re-read over and over for pure enjoyment of her story-telling and fascinating characters. To be honest, I must admit that there was no element of this book that appealed to me, as with some of her previous books. Good Faith was interesting because I find real estate interesting, A Thousand Acres was a tale of familiar midwestern crop farms like the ones I see all around me, Moo was interesting because of the diverse cast of characters and their vast variety of agendas regarding the university, Horse Heaven was, well, pure heaven for horse racing aficionados, but Ten Days was just un-compelling.