This was our January group read and I am glad I read it. The writing reflects the craziness of the characters and each one requires a bit of adjustment to get into the flow and rhythm of their minds. While some may find this makes the reading experience hard, I found it added to the reading experience because it forced me to perceive differently. I liked the pushing of boundaries this author was willing to do.

RELEASE NOTES:

I am sending this off to a fellow BCer in British Columbia.

Thanks so much, lilysmom! I should have mentioned in my PM to you several minutes ago that this book arrived this week, while I was away on a business trip. It looks terrific - really quirky and interesting. Thanks so much for sending it along - it was very kind of you.

"Happy is what you realize you are a fraction of a second before it's too late". So warns the main character in Hotel World, an exploration of loss, brokenness and connection told in five segments by five women (well, four women and the ghost of a fifth), all connected in various ways to one another, and to a branch of the fictional Global Hotel. Set in an unnamed city in northern England in 1999, Hotel World riffs on a line from Muriel Spark's 1958 Memento Mori which it takes as an epigraph: "Remember you must die." It sounds bleak, but in fact the book functioned -- for me -- as one of those timely smacks-in-the-head, a quiet reminder that our days are numbered, the number is uncertain, and we are (as my Scottish stepdad frequently reminds me) "a long time dead". Philip Larkin described this insight as "a special way of being afraid" (see his Aubade). If nothing else, it's an interesting kind of awareness to cultivate. Tick tock.

The five women whose stories comprise Hotel World are, in order of appearance:

• The ghost of Sara Wilby, a nineteen year old chambermaid who fell to her death down a dumbwaiter shaft on her second day of work at the Global Hotel. Sara -- whose name is a play on the lyrics of an old Doris Day tune (Que sera, sera ... whatever will be) -- haunts the rooms of the Global, appears as an apparition to her family (which she stops doing, she says, 'cause it makes her mother "miserable, jumpy and fearful"), and ultimately visits her own body in the grave, asking her rotting, corporeal self to fill in some details of "their" life which are rapidly slipping from memory.
• Elspeth Freeman ("Else"), a malodorous homeless woman with a terrible cough. As the winter of 1999 sets in, she is offered a room for the night by Lise O'Brien, a desk clerk at the Global. Else has been noticing a new girl, who looks only 14 or 15, who has shown up on the patch of sidewalk where Else usually begs for change, "watching the hotel for someone going in, or someone coming out of it".
• Lise O'Brien, a desk clerk at the Global in her mid-twenties who is ailing as the book begins (though Else is the only character to notice this, on the evening when Lise comes to offer her the room). As Lise's segment begins, Sara's accident is some time in the past, and Lise is bedridden with an undiagnosable illness and struggling to complete a benefits form.
• Penny Warner, a writer for a company that evaluates hotel chains. Penny's character is annoyingly stupid and shallow, but she provides comic relief ("Remember you must diet.").
• Clare Wilby, Sara's younger sister, who turns out to be the young girl Else has been noticing on her "patch".

Each segment is told from the point of view of the woman narrating it, and the language shifts from character to character (requiring the adjustment lilysmom noted, above). Nonetheless, a number of recurrent themes and motifs link the characters, who are also linked by their practical connections to Sara and/or the hotel, or by story details (like the flood Else creates, resulting in a shortage of hot water and wet boots for Penny, and a faint memory -- much later -- for Lise). These themes include sexual awakening/abuse (Else, remembering her own abuse, fantasizes that this is what has happened to Clare, then Penny describes an experience almost identical to Else's fantasy) and haunting (Sara does it, obviously, but Lise also fantasizes about it, and there's a great sequence where a blatantly bogus television medium connects with someone's auntie at p. 126). There's falling (and its corollary, landing), with Sara's dramatic fall down the dumbwaiter shaft echoed by Clare's later memories of her high diving, or dreaming she was falling, and Else's observation that something has hit the pavement hard in a particular place. And there's the smell of pastry, a serving of croissants and butter and "the name for the heated up bread" Sara can never quite get. It's the subtlety of these motifs, the fact their recurrence is barely noticeable if you're not paying attention, that makes them so effective. They become like ghost elements hovering around the main story.

I left this book (long past midnight one night, which is unusual for me) feeling I'd read something very beautiful and important, so I can't help but recommend it to anyone else inclined to spend time pondering the big questions...

Hotel World was shortlisted for both the 2001 Orange Prize and the Booker Prize. You can read Salon's review of the book here and the San Francisco Chronicle's here.

I finished Hotel World last night, and just finished typing a review into the journal entry I started several days ago. I'm going to send this book to my friend ruthwater in Manchester, England, since -- assuming she hasn't already read it -- I think it's the kind of book she might enjoy. Thanks again, lilysmom, for sending me the book in the first place. I really enjoyed it!

arrived unexpectedly from goatgrrl - thanks.