The Hills Are Sort of Dead

Jane Smiley's "13 Ways to Read a Novel" ladled me up when I was drowning in my own literary soup of uncertainty, (to borrow one of her metaphors), so I looked forward to her latest with eager gratitude. Alas, "Ten Days On The Hills," as the poet once said, sucketh.

It's a good pitch: A motley crew gathers in the Hollywood hills to trade stories and fluids for ten days; the Iraq war looms outside; things will change. Unfortunately, the things that will change are likely to be of interest to no one but the participants, who are non-intriguing Hollywood types. Smiley's movie-obsessed characters are not exactly card-board cut-outs: they're more like the real enough people that stand next to the cardboard cut-outs and make the card-board cut-outs seem splashy and attractive.

That's a problem, because you're meant to spend ten days with them, and Gosh you will feel the time as they talk about things that are ocassionally interesting but just as often dull. The book really is like a Bunuelian cocktail party host that refuses to let you go, but doesn't really give you actual cocktails to stay for.

And then there's the sex, a lot of it, but it's not hot Hollywood sex. It's old people sex, and when it comes to the nitty gritty Smiley uses the descriptive lens of a woman in her late fifties that's gleefully surprised at the persistence of her libido. I say it's wonderful and empowering, it's nice to know to know that grandma is still going, but I don't need to have the sagging veins in grandpa's worn down, impotent you-know-what lovingly described. It's mean to be naughty, but it comes across as a turn-off.