- Paperback: 9999 pages
- Publisher: Picador; 3 edition (8 Jan 1999)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0330370073
- ISBN-13: 978-0330370073
- Product Dimensions: 19.4 x 13 x 2 cm
- Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 76,098 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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Product Description
Product Description
‘Always funny and often profound’ Time Out
Book Description
‘The hotel has stood in Dublin’s quays since the ’20s, but its glory days have long since passed it by. It’s decrepit now – the haunt of weekend-breakers and tourists who don’t know any better. Most of the guests and staff we meet are escaping from something . . . The joy for the reader come from the ingenuity with which each successive writer picks up the baton, teasing unforeseen consequences from events in earlier chapters. The result is always funny and often profound’ John O’Connell, Time Out ‘Whoever is behind the middle-aged man facing his midlife crisis, a cat-napper trying to order an acceptable meal for his yowling victim or two sisters drunkenly disinterring their past, they all share a common sense of humour. That liking for witty one-liners, or for a contrariness which encourages a woman to tell a man picked up in the bar that she is a nun, is extremely funny’ Aisling Foster, The Times ‘Seven top-notch contributions and a genuine feeling of collective impulse . . . the result is not merely a proper novel, seamlessly executed and with discernible themes and patterns, but a very good novel indeed . . . The reader leaves Finbar’s decaying premises enthusing over the state of modern Irish writing’ D. J. Taylor, Spectator ‘This is a very good work indeed . . . You should check out – or into – Finbar’s Hotel today’ John Dunne, Books Ireland
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First Sentence
Ben Winters was looking for the minibar. Read the first page
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Back Cover
Ben Winters was looking for the minibar. Read the first page
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Concordance
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Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Back Cover
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
In the tradition (but not awful quality) of the movie Four Rooms, editor Bolger brings together six of Ireland's top authors to each tell the tale of one room and the circumstances which bring its occupant there. He's managed to solicit a nice set of loosely related short stories although I didn't find "Room 102-White Lies" or "Room 106-An Old Flame" quite as compelling as the others. Once of the nice little twists is that the reader doesn't know which author wrote which story, and not being an expert on those represented, I'd hesitate to hazard any guesses. This is about as good an introduction as any to the six modern Irish writers represented: Roddy Doyle (Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha, The Woman Who Walked Into Doors), Anne Enright, Hugo Hamilton, Jennifer Johnston, Joseph O'Connor (Cowboys and Indians, The Salesman), and Colm Toibin.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
The South Croydon reading circle chose this for their April 99 read. The concept of seven authors picking up the thread of a novel and continuing it really appealed to us. However, when we read it we felt that no one had really taken advantage of it. The links between the chapters were tenuous - they could easily have been seven unconnected short stories. There were, however, some good laughs along the way, and one or two touching moments. A disappointment, but not a disaster.
2 of 3 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Within any collection of short stories there are always weak and strong pieces and very rarely have the complete feel that a novel has. Bolger's idea was to make one long story by interconnecting short pieces by different Irish writers on the same thing (a formula that has been repeated with Yeats Is Dead). Unfortunately, Bolger and the other FH contributors never quite succeed in a flowing collage of stories.
Some of the short stories have wildly different tones from the cat kidnap farce of room 103 to the sad memories of room 106 and instead of creating a wider canvas for exploring contrasting styles in one book the lack of real interplay between the stories means that the collection doesn't build up any sense of momentum remaining higgledy-piggledy. As a reader will always be more attracted to one type of style and tone than another the mixed-bag style of FH means that although some stories will be spot on for people there will always be some that don't.
Where one story overlaps another it has little to do with the core plot and, in some places, feels almost too convenient and superficial. A real Shakespearean interplay between plot strands would have made the book much more enjoyable and consistent but would in all probability be impossible to write using more than one author.
FH is amusing, touching and sad in places and the stories for the most part stand up well in their own right. Regrettably a collection of short stories by different people writing on the same subject in an overlapping style can never have the cohesion that a collection written by the same person could have and it is in this respect that FH really lets the reader down. This is very good effort of an unworkable plan and probably best to read as nine unrelated stories than think about their connections.
Some of the short stories have wildly different tones from the cat kidnap farce of room 103 to the sad memories of room 106 and instead of creating a wider canvas for exploring contrasting styles in one book the lack of real interplay between the stories means that the collection doesn't build up any sense of momentum remaining higgledy-piggledy. As a reader will always be more attracted to one type of style and tone than another the mixed-bag style of FH means that although some stories will be spot on for people there will always be some that don't.
Where one story overlaps another it has little to do with the core plot and, in some places, feels almost too convenient and superficial. A real Shakespearean interplay between plot strands would have made the book much more enjoyable and consistent but would in all probability be impossible to write using more than one author.
FH is amusing, touching and sad in places and the stories for the most part stand up well in their own right. Regrettably a collection of short stories by different people writing on the same subject in an overlapping style can never have the cohesion that a collection written by the same person could have and it is in this respect that FH really lets the reader down. This is very good effort of an unworkable plan and probably best to read as nine unrelated stories than think about their connections.
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