Quippiness - in Beautiful Ruins

The weird gets weirder in Jess Walter's Beautiful Ruins as we explore the back story of actress Dee Moray, or, with her career now in the rear window, Debra Moore, as she raises her son, Pat, whose actual dad is Richard Burton, but who believes is actual dad is the long-lost hotelier Pasquale and who is raised at least first four years by mom and her husband - we've seen in earlier chapters that his name is Bender, and of course he's the Alvin Bender who was writing his "war novel" in Pasquale's pension where Dee also stayed - following this? Didn't think so. Bender comes back to the States, realizing from a passing remark from Dee that he really only had one chapter to write, the sad and lovely chapter about his encounter with a beautiful Italian woman and his guilt after trying to force her to have sex - in one chapter we see him try to meet the woman about 15 years after the war, he thinks he's tracked her down and she turns out to be a prostitute in Genoa, who feigns not to remember him, or maybe really doesn't, or maybe it's really not the same woman - later Bender, giving up his writing, joins the dad's auto biz back in the states and goes to Seattle to set up a farnchise and there tracks down Dee, who's been acting in amateur theater and fending off advances from many men, including a kind of sympathetic gym teacher. If there's one fault with Walters's energetic style, it may be that too many of her characters are "quippy," that is they speak in quips like characters on TV or in 30s movies, and their quips sound very alike. The Bender chapter ends with a bit of melodrama - not at all unanticipated, as we know he died young and we're just waiting to see how, and of course we do. The novel should be nearing its end - and won't be able do so until the long-separated characters - Dee, Pasquale, Deane - come together at last and until her son, Pat, learns his true star-crossed origins.