Ten Days in the Hills
A Novel by Jane Smiley

Review by Rawlins McKinney April 19, 2007 Issue

Jane Smiley’s new novel, Ten Days in the Hills, has a very distant ancestor in Boccaccio’s The Decameron.

A few literary DNA genomes have survived the more than 600-year time span between the two creations. They both span a time period of 10 days. Both have tales told by a cast of 10 characters who find themselves temporarily isolated from the rest of the world. Boccaccio’s pilgrims have a common purpose: to escape the plague that has gripped Florence. Smiley’s characters have arrived in the hills above Los Angeles a bit more eclectically. Although their reasons for getting together may differ, they are in fact isolating themselves from a 21st century disaster; the second Bush has just invaded Iraq.

The Decameron stories are confined by a formal structure. Ten characters tell a tale every day for 10 days. It’s a collection of clearly defined short stories. Ten Days in the Hills is a novel, albeit almost plot less. It’s written in the third person, each of the first six days seen from a different character’s point of view. The remaining four days are split among two or more characters. Unlike The Decameron, there is not an orderly presentation of stories. Smiley focuses on the 10 characters and the stories they tell are a means to understand them. Stories are there, but are not conveniently summarized for the reader at the chapter beginnings as they are in The Decameron. You find them in the midst of erotic bed romps, in arguments, in movie discussions and film pitches.

Day One begins with Elena in bed with her sleeping lover, Max. It’s the morning after the previous night’s Oscar ceremony they had attended. Max is a director who won an Oscar back in the ‘70s. Thus he “had a certain sort of fame in Hollywood: most people had heard of him but lots of younger ones assumed he was dead.” Elena writes self-improvement guides. Her first thought this morning is the second Iraq war; the American invasion took place the previous Thursday. Her “fragmented, Oscar-colored mood jelled into a general feeling of shame and fear.”

Max’s Pacific Palisades mansion is invaded by a host of friends and relatives. He was expecting most of them, just not all at once. He encounters the first wave when he gets out of bed, still naked, and heads for the kitchen for coffee. He quickly returns to Elena and tells her the house is full of people. Stony, his agent will be spending a few days while the floors in his neighboring house are redone. Charlie, Max’s boyhood friend, has arrived a day early. Charlie has recently changed jobs and divorced his wife. Delphine, a 70-year-old Jamaican and Max’s former mother-in-law still resides in his guesthouse with her best friend, Cassie. Along with Max’s next-door neighbor, the trio is making pancakes in the kitchen. Max’s daughter Isabel has fled New York and her ex-boyfriend. Unknown to Max and the rest of the crowd, Isabel has been sleeping with Stoney since she was 16. Simon, Elena’s son, is also in the kitchen. He and his newly shaved head are a surprise. A student at UC-Davis, Simon is in town for the shooting of a film in West Hollywood. He is playing the part of a penis, hence the shaved head.

Later in the day, Zoe Cunningham and her lover, Paul, appear. Zoe is Max’s ex-wife, Isabel’s mother and Delphine’s daughter. She is a “pop icon and sex goddess,” prone to crises. Paul is a yoga healer, and something of a charlatan. He has a simple explanation for the friction between Zoe and Isabel: In a previous life, Zoe had been Isabel’s husband, and Zoe had taken a mistress. This was the reason for Isabel’s passive-aggressive behavior with her mother. Paul and Zoe are on their way to a monastery for a retreat but soon decide to stay with the group. After prolonged exposures to Paul’s convoluted discourses, the reader probably wishes they had continued their original pilgrimage.

On the seventh day the entourage moves to an estate in Bel-Air. This modern day Xanadu is owned by a wealthy Russian who wants Max to do a remake of Taras Bulba. He has turned the property and its servants over to Max for three days, a perk that he hopes will help persuade Max to make the movie. Here the conversations continue amidst gourmet meals, rare works of art and elaborately themed bedrooms.

While there is a lot of lively talk, I found myself skimming through parts of some narratives. The sex scenes are more clinical than erotic. While Ten Days in the Hills is not much of a page-turner novel, the people are attractive enough to keep your attention (most of the time). Unlike the other eight characters, Delphine and Cassie don’t get a direct point of view. Everything we learn about them is through the words and thoughts of others. That’s a shame. I’ll bet these two septuagenarians have a lot more to share than what we get in the book.

Ten Days in the Hills is a fun book for the most part but it is a long way from being a classic like its ancestor. I doubt that it will be read by our descendents six hundred years from now.

Alfred A. Knopf, 449 Pages, available online, at local libraries and local book retailers.

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