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Title: Hotel World by Ali Smith ISBN: 0385722109 Publisher: Anchor Books Pub. Date: 15 January, 2002 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $12.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 3.65
Rating: 4
Summary: A hard but worthy read...
Comment: It's hard to say exactly what I think about this book. It was good, but not great; parts were very interesting to read, while some were more difficult. I am not normally drawn to the dreamlike writing style that Ali Smith displays here -- I just don't like to think that much when I read. However, I found that Hotel World was easier to understand than most of these stream-of-consciousness novels.
Instead of being a cut-and-dried story, Ali Smith has chosen to break up her novel into five separate vignettes. The main point of the novel, I believe, is Sara Wilby, a chambermaid at Global Hotel, who fell to her death in a dumbwaiter on her second night on the job. Sara's spirit haunts the hotel, her family, and tortures her own corpse in an effort to find out the details of her death.
Following this story (which was excellent and the reason why I continued on), readers are introduced four other women: Else, a homeless woman who camps out in front of the hotel; Penny, a journalist on a business trip who finds herself bored and goes in search of something different; Lise, the hotel's receptionist who recalls the events that take place in the hotel after Sara's death; and Clare, Sara's sister, whose meandering thoughts depict her grief over the loss of Sara, and her determination to carry on.
I found this novel to be a difficult read because of the writing style. However, I'm not sure if a linear approach would have made this story come out right. The dreamlike quality put on an atmospheric, ghostly spin, and I believe the book is better for it. Hotel World was definitely worth my time, although I questioned myself many times throughout my reading. But now that I am done and have had time to reflect on it, I realize that I did enjoy this book, and for other readers who can persevere, I believe they will find it worth it, too.
Rating: 4
Summary: Experimental, inventive but overly hyped
Comment: Ali Smith's "Hotel World" is hardly a novel. More like five vignettes held together by the most tenuous of links - a common locale, the Global Hotel, where the stories take place, a perfect excuse for the use of five disembodied voices as narrators. There's the ghost of young national swimmer Sara Wilby, the chambermaid who paid for the fun of a prank with her life, her grieving sister Claire, regular bag lady Else from across the road who gets to be a non-paying guest for the night courtesy of the kindhearted receptionist Lise, and Penny, the glamourous visiting journalist. Smith's writing style is consciously experimental, almost deliberately inventive and varied, so it shouldn't surprise that some of her stories work better than others. Sort of a hit or miss.
The opening chapter, Sara's ghostly confessional, is an absolute delight. Full of playful regret and poignance, it expresses articulately poor Sara's shock at being consigned in a few seconds to the other side of existence. So much so that she keeps going over and reminiscing on every little detail of living. Lise's story is also strangely moving because we can all relate to it. Her ambivalent act of kindness is every minion's secret dream. Of cocking a snook at management as a therapeutic release from one's sense of powerlessness. Claire's stream-of-consciousness rambling is rich in content but frustratingly difficult to access. Unless you've had plenty of practice with Virginia Woolf novels. Penny's adventure on the corridors outside her room is surrealistic and reads like a spooky episode from "Twin Peaks". But it isn't quite up to the mark. Else's story is unexceptional and the closing chapter with references to the spirit of national icons like Princess Diana and the late 60s pop diva Dusty Springfield just seems like a lame attempt by Smith to gain a more general validity for her novel. Stylistically, what gives "Hotel World" a coherence is Smith's use of repeat themes and objects throughout her stories. Like that of "falling" (Sara's flight down the chute.....and the strange girl outside Penny's corridor peering into the void behind the wall) and the "watches" and "time" motif , etc.
Ali Smith's "Hotel World" is an interesting experiment and typical of the works of young contemporary writers from England. She is a name to watch but it's early days yet. "Hotel World" is ultimately more hype than substance...and by far the weakest and the most lightweight of the Booker Prize nominees of 2001. Smith has to pay her dues to land the big one !
Rating: 5
Summary: Excellent short novel
Comment: I picked up this book because I was browsing through previous year's Booker winners and it looked like one of the more promising ones. The book has a certain energy that propels you through it and it never gets to be plodding or tedious. The central event of the book is the death of a maid, but I found the most interesting characters of the book to be neither the maid nor her grieving sister, but rather a magazine writer and a homeless woman. The unusual encounter that they have with each other and the completely different (and wrong) impressions that each has of the other are at once sad and laughable. The book is particularly effective in that there are no neatly tied up ends so it almost seems non-fictional. Another strength is the skill with which Smith depicts the street scene outside the hotel, which will ring true to anyone who has visited England. Since this book is short, it's easy to read at one sitting, which is what I'd recommend because of the stream-of-consciousness style.
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Title: The Darts of Cupid and Other Stories by Edith Templeton ISBN: 0375421599 Publisher: Pantheon Books Pub. Date: 29 January, 2002 List Price(USD): $23.00 |
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Title: The Dark Room by Rachel Seiffert ISBN: 0375726322 Publisher: Vintage Books Pub. Date: 08 October, 2002 List Price(USD): $13.00 |
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Title: Oxygen by Andrew Miller ISBN: 0151007217 Publisher: Harcourt Pub. Date: 26 April, 2002 List Price(USD): $24.00 |
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Title: True History of the Kelly Gang by Peter Carey ISBN: 0375724672 Publisher: Vintage Books Pub. Date: 02 November, 2001 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
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Title: Number9Dream by David Mitchell ISBN: 0375507264 Publisher: Random House Pub. Date: 19 February, 2002 List Price(USD): $24.95 |
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