Beautiful Ruins screen adaptation on its way.

It's official. They're making a screen adaptation and they've already hired the director. All I have to say is if you can judge a movie by the book cover, I'm in! I know lots of you have already read this; I haven't but it looks so delicious. I can see myself sitting on a rock, the turquoise mediteranean below, my shoulder warmed by the dazzling sun. Deep sigh.

Here's the yummy lowdown from Publishers Weekly
"From the moment it opens—on a rocky patch of Italian coastline, circa 1962, when a daydreaming young innkeeper looks out over the water and spies a mysterious woman approaching him on a boat—Jess Walter's Beautiful Ruins is a dazzling, yet deeply human, roller coaster of a novel. From the lavish set of Cleopatra to the shabby revelry of the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, to the back lots of contemporary Hollywood, Beautiful Ruins is gloriously inventive and constantly surprising—a story of flawed yet fascinating people navigating the rocky shores of their lives while clinging to their improbable dreams."

Todd Field will direct; (Little Children, In the Bedroom) he'll also co-write the screenplay with the novel's author Jess Walter.

Walter told the L.A. Times "This is about Italy in the 1960s, Hollywood now, Hollywood then, the Seattle music scene, the Donner party, World War II. Hollywood is like a giant mirror, I think, and I used it that way in the book, reflecting characters back to themselves."

He also said he has been "simultaneously drawn to and repelled from Hollywood for years. I wanted to explore how we're all defining ourselves now. With Facebook and Twitter, we're all our own little publicists in a way. And the thing we think of as Hollywood is this kind of studio system, this thing that is sort of fractured and not what it was. The novel is full of shots at the vacuous banalities Hollywood turns out."

And gave this example "One chapter is dedicated to "Donner!" -- a detailed movie pitch that describes a group of cannibals devouring the unfortunate hero's children.

"It's the least likely movie to ever be made," he said, "but it reads exactly like a guy pitching a movie."

Is it as dazzling as I've heard? I'm looking forward to finding out. Have you read it; are you on board?

Read the rest of the L.A. Times article here