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Amazon.co.uk Review
Hotel World is not an easy read: disturbing and witty by turns, with its stream-of-consciousness narrators reminiscent of Virgina Woolf's The Waves, its deceptively rambling language is underpinned by a formal construction. Exploring the "big themes" of love, death and millennial capitalism, it takes as its starting point Muriel Spark's Momento Mori ("Remember you must die") and counteracts this axiom with a resolute "Remember you must live". Ali Smith's novel is a daring, compelling, and frankly spooky read. --Catherine Taylor --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
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Woooooooo-hooooooo what a fall what a soar what a plummet what a dash into dark into light what a plunge what a glide thud crash what a drop what a rush what a swoop what a fright what a mad hushed skirl what a smash mush mash-up broke and gashed what a heart in my mouth what an end. Read the first page Browse Sample Pages
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Customer Reviews
All five voices in this book belong to women, so Ali Smith may have a weakness when it comes to portraying men. The first voice we hear is the spirit of the recently departed Sara Wilby, a promising young swimmer who could have been a sub for the national team. She has died in a freak accident just days after starting a new job in a hotel. Her spirit interrogates her corpse with clenched teeth to find out how it happened. Clare Wilby, Sara's younger sister, is just as determined to find out what exactly happened, and haunts the streets outside the hotel. Lise, the hotel receptionist, only has vague memories (if any) of Sara before her death, tries to help Clare, unaware that she will be bedridden a few months later, felled by a mysterious disease. Else is dying on the streets, probably wasting away with tuberculosis. Her world seems inhabited by the strange words she picks up from poets in libraries who died long ago. She tries to find the meaning of "rebegot" from John Donne's A Nocturnal on St. Lucy's Day. In the company of the affluent, but ignorant, journalist Penny, this word transmutes into "rebiggot". Else's voice shows that she had an education once, but now she even has difficulty reading clocks - time has lost meaning to her. Her TV is watching through the windows as other people watch TV, with TV dinners in their laps. But this is not a dismal world, despite the poems dedicated to dying children - there is every indication that Else could be 'reborn'. This is a world, after all, where the birds sing cheerful TV ads in Lise's dreams.
There's a whole range of other, minor characters too, such as the girl in the watch shop, the learner driver and his amorous teacher, Duncan, the guy with whom Sara Wilby had the bet that led to her death. Even Princess Di and Dusty Springfield make fleeting appearances towards the end, and perhaps they and the Millennium could date the novel. But Ali Smith carries off her prose with such poetry and style that I am sure that it will always remain fresh. I don't think of Virginia Woolf when I read this novel - I laughed at the joke about the dog who walked into the Western saloon looking for the guy who shot his paw - James Joyce's The Dead seems a much more apt comparison. Now and again, the Booker prize panel does nominate really good books on its shortlist from powerful new writers. Ali Smith's voice (to borrow a phrase from her companion in Internet search engine results) will rumble in the jungle for a very long time.
As other reviewers have pointed out, the title doesn't really describe the content. I think I was hoping for a novel / stories grounded very much in the setting of the hotel - I expected that the hotel would be an ever-present nameless character. But it wasn't; I felt the hotel was really just used to group the characters. So i'm still waiting for the book that WILL evoke hotel life in the way I'd hoped this would.
However, there were some wonderful moments in this book, fresh prose, some lovely ideas - the spirit questioning the corpse of the departed Sara Wilby was beautiful and I liked a lot of Claire Wilby's chapter; I really felt the pain of the sister left behind. I loved the detail, though at times the stream of consciousness style got a little much for me. I enjoyed the interplay between the characters, and the links that the reader was able to see which the characters couldn't.
Unfortunately, in some areas, I wished the prose on at a faster rate. With reflection though, I feel enjoyed the book more than I did on first reading.
I found the last passages of the book quite magical, the morning; glimpses of all the characters we'd met, some we hadn't, the threads between characters waking up around the country. Not the most startlingly original idea, of course, but beautifully executed.
I would recommend this book, and I think that in time I will read it again, and probably gain even a little more from it.
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