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Fifteen years ago Jane Smiley wrote a Pulitzer prize-winning novel, ''A Thousand Acres'', inspired by Shakespeare's "King Lear". This book takes the same approach of pinching inspiration from elsewhere, but not from where you might immediately think. Ian McEwan's 2005 novel [[Saturday]] covers the same theme as ''Ten Days In The Hills''(the Iraq war) and manages to do so within the course of a single day, 15 Feb 2003, when the big anti-war demonstration was held in London. Smiley, however, is American, so her version is bigger though not neccesarily better. Her 464 pages cover a longer period - those 10 days

Smiley's main characters are four men and six women who retreat to the hills near Los Angeles to get away from news of the Iraq war, first to producer Max's home and then to the fabulous house of a mysterious Ukrainian, known as Mike. There's Max's first wife Zoë (a film star who, in a flash of inspiration, chose the name Zoë at age 6, instead of her original name of Susan) and his current partner Elena, and Elena's son Simon from a previous relationship, and Max and Zoë's daughter Isabel. Zoë's new partner Paul and her mother Delphine plus her friend Cassie are also staying in the house, and the final members of the group are Stoney, Max's agent who is sleeping with Isabel, and an old friend, Charlie. Confused yet? It's rare to have such a numerous and intricate cast of main characters in a story, and this group certainly required concentration to keep track of who was who, who was doing who and who used to do who.