Ten Days in the Hills Jane Smiley Faber & Faber, 464pp, £16.99 ISBN 0571235336
A cinematic comparison seems apt for Jane Smiley’s gentle satire of Hollywood mores. Although it is loosely based on Boccaccio’s Decameron, what springs to mind most readily – as her disparate collection of characters discuss politics, movies and the incipient war in Iraq – is a Robert Altman film. The novel has a similar meandering quality, with one lengthy conversation bleeding into another. Set just after the subdued Oscars ceremony of 2003, the novel takes place in the home of film director Max and his new partner Elena. Their love-making is interrupted rather suddenly by the arrival en masse of Zoe, a self-centred film star, and her various friends and lovers.
Over ten days together, the characters drift in and out of the narrative, all getting a chance to tell their stories. There are frequent arguments, usually to do with Iraq and the Bush administration; and a change of location two-thirds of the way through, when the characters decamp to the mansion of a wealthy Russian acquaintance, does little to disrupt this rhythm.
The characters are well drawn and, with Zoe and Isabel in particular, Smiley gets under the skin of a passive-aggressive mother-daughter relationship.
As satire, however, the book lacks punch and its targets are rather predictable.
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