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Unabridged audio CD. 5 CD's
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First Sentence
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
Front Cover | Copyright | Excerpt | Back Cover
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
Front Cover | Copyright | Excerpt | Back Cover
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
17 of 17 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Ali Smith's Hotel World was shortlisted for both the Orange and the Booker Prize. Although this book is in many ways about death, it is so vivid and vital that it is not surprising that it has won such critical praise. Some readers have compared Ali Smith's writing with that of Virginia Woolf, but I think that Virginia Woolf would have good reason to be afraid of Ali Smith. Okay, so both have written novels that are full of streams of consciousness, but the spirits in Ali Smith's world are far more witty and recognisable, even if their "minibar is fear".
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.
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.
13 of 13 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
3.5 stars would be more accurate for this book. It didn't touch me enough for a 4, but 3 seems stingy for a book that has so much in its favour.
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.
10 of 10 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
I first learned of Ali Smith's Hotel World on Radio 4. She was being interviewed about her award-winning book, and I thought, 'Radio 4 -- it must be good.' Wrong. While the multiple narrators in the novel have an incredible ability to notice minute details and form them into connected ideas or have them flow from one idea to another (stream of consciousness), the novel fails. The individual characters have limited space, literally and physically/metaphysically, and their messages are muted by all of the insignificant observations they make. I struggled to get throught the novel, and twenty pages from the end, I threw in the towel. Smith will never be a Virginia Wolf based on Hotel World.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
Witty and Poignant
Ali Smith's second novel, rather more experimental than her first, is a witty and melancholy tale based around a hotel (part of a ubiquitous chain). Read more
Published 2 months ago by Kate Hopkins
Soft hearted modernism.
I've had this book for ages but only gave it a real go when I ran out of Agatha Christie in the middle of the night recently. Read more
Published 3 months ago by Valentine Gersbach
RambleJarbleGurgle
I picked up the book & tried to read it but the guys working outside he's making way too much noise one of them's wearing a yellow jacket like say you look at the road *random... Read more
Published 4 months ago by Poison-the-cure
& since I will always know off by heart I will not forget the sound of...
Ali Smith is one of those hyped-up authors that critics love, but most people just don't get. She's both hated and loved for her streams of consciousness style and for the... Read more
Published 5 months ago by R. Chiratheep
Too much descriptive waffle
I listened to this as an audio book and started skipping bits. The long passages of introspective waffle about nothing very much became very tiresome. Read more
Published 20 months ago by Dunfermline woman
Brilliant...
I loved Hotel World; it's a truly brilliant book that made me feel lucky to be alive. Ali Smith has a writing style that's beautiful, original, but most strikingly, incredibly... Read more
Published on 11 May 2008 by rivadireno
Ulysses Lite
Very derivative, I thought. Although it is well-written, and I did like the first chapter. I thought it should have been left on its own as a short story.
Published on 16 Dec 2007 by Christopher Taylor
Woooo Hoooo
Wooooo Hooooo - anouncement to everyone: this novel is absolutely appallling and I am being polite. It actually made me incredibly angry because I felt that the author has no... Read more
Published on 13 Dec 2007 by J
A beautiful, haunting novel
I was captured by this book straight away, and love the way each of the main characters speak to the reader in a distinctive style - the voice of the teenager Clare comes across... Read more
Published on 28 Feb 2007 by Molyneux
Be depressed, be very depressed
I'm not sure whether this book was well written or not, I suppose it was, as I managed to finish it. Read more
Published on 24 July 2006 by Lisa
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