- Paperback: 288 pages
- Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd; Reprint edition (30 Sep 1993)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0140231730
- ISBN-13: 978-0140231731
- Product Dimensions: 19.8 x 12.8 x 1.7 cm
- Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars See all reviews (17 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 1,807,262 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
The White Hotel
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--This text refers to an alternate
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Product Description
A classic tale in which the author has sought to reconcile the idea of individual destiny with that of historical fate. Originally shortlisted for the Booker Prize. From the author of EATING PAVLOVA.
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
30 of 32 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
I could throw around superlatives and they would not have much impact. Too many reviews are written about mediocre books that one would think them, from the reviewers reaction, modern masterpieces. "Flawlessly-rendered scenes of incomparably lyrical, powerful, acute, seamless, ineffable, gorgeous, unassailable, tender, dynamic, lush, titillating, cerebral, divine, a libidinous, self-revelatory paean to the inexpressible in art and life that packs an emotional wallop!," or some such phrase.
Sometimes a person just has to come right out and say "This one grabbed me by the rear," and let it go at that. This is a book that really has to be experienced first-hand. My only word of advice is not to give up on the book too soon. It's absolutely unclear in the first 40 or 50 pages where Thomas is taking you and he doesn't present too promising a train ride at that stage. Settle in for the journey. Look out the window and watch as the landscape starts becoming more recognizable. The landmarks with which you thought you were earlier familiar, start revealing themselves in entirely new patterns. For this is a novel about revelation, more than anything else. Readers just have to trust that "all will be revealed" by novel's end, and it is, magnificently.
Thomas performs a near-miraculous feat in this novel. Reading The White Hotel is akin to looking through a an extremely high-powered telescope and what at first looks likes fuzzy, indiscreet blurs, become unbelievably colorful and complex nebulae and galaxies as the instrument's focus is adjusted. The book begins with a long poem, full of erotic imagery and near-incoherent description, that we are startled to learn is written by a woman. Following this is a prose version of the story that we learn is written by a young woman who is a semi-successful Opera-singer who comes to Sigmund Freud for analysis as she suffers from acute psychosomatic pains in her left breast and her womb. She will become the Frau Anna G. of Freud's famous case-study (Freud's "Wolfman" also appears as a peripheral character in the novel). Thomas lets us in on Freud's analysis, as well as his ambiguous feelings towards his patient. At several stages, Freud is ready to throw up his hands and tell her that he won't continue his treatment as he feels she is not forthcoming enough to make any real progress. He always relents, however, because he senses that "Lisa" (the Opera-singers real name) has enough redeeming attributes to warrant his time.
As the novel progresses, we learn more and more about Lisa's past and the seminal childhood incident (occurring when she is 3-years-old and vacationing with her parents in Odessa) that estranged her from her mother, and more particularly, from her father. This will be the central motif of the novel as well as Lisa's Cassandra-like ability to see the future through her dreams and her imaginative powers. If this begins to strike you as psychological clap-trap, rest assured it isn't. The novel at no point devolves into psycho-babble or pretentiousness. Everything in the novel, we come to learn, is there for a reason. There is absolutely nothing amateurish about the master-plan and the sublime architecture that Thomas erects (no Freudian pun intended). This is as carefully-constructed a novel as anything I've ever read.
I am certainly not going to spoil the read for anyone by giving away the novel's ending, but suffice it to say that it's as powerful as anything-written in the past 30 years, at minimum. The only drawback to this book is that I didn't give it enough of a chance on first-encounter. Hopefully, that won't be the case with those reading this review.
6 of 6 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
"Thomas takes us beyond Freud, beyond Eros and Thanatos, and thus challenges the very substance of the Freudian text. Within the analyses and, he suggests, buried within her individual neurosis, is the subtext of history--the Final Solution. And beyond the horror is the transcendent vision of salvation through love in the mythical state of Israel. In this bold, intellectually challenging novel, Thomas goes beyond both history and historical fiction: he explores the shadowy realm of perception and perceiver with breathtaking vision and artistry." Reviewed by Daniel Weiss, Virginia Quarterly Review
'The White Hotel' is an extraordinary book. It was given the highest recommendation by my best friend, and it is a read I will never forget. It is taken from the case history of Lisa Erdman, an early patient of Sigmund Freud; the book explores her case of sexual hysteria and finds the way to self destructiveness. The scenes with Lisa and Dr.Freud are fascinating. They take her back into childhood and into her dreams. Lisa's erotic dreams are almost visions. They are premonitions to Lisa of death and destruction. Freud helps Lisa to resume her normal life as an opera singer, and we are brought into the world of opera as Lisa finds it. She remarries and settles in the Ukraine with her husband and step-son, and then the unraveling begins. Their harrowing adventures will leave you on the edge. As life as Lisa knows it begins to crumble, so do we.
"Lisa's story is told three times. Once, as a long letter of erotic ramblings by a psychotic, once in image steeped poetry, and finally, as narrative prose, in the dry tone of a doctor discussing a case, complete with musings and asides. By the end of the third rendition, the reader begins to understand something the eminent psychologist never will. That Anna is not only a product of, but a metaphor for the collective fall of European consciousness into madness that still scars the entire century."
T.Rex
'The White Hotel' is much like a mystery, and we are part of the unraveling. I was filled with melancholy and a dream like stance while reading this book. I have not read a book that is so well written. and at the same time lays groundwork of the extraordinary. A trip for Lisa becomes a trip that we will not soon forget. Highly Recommended. prisrob 2-18-07
'The White Hotel' is an extraordinary book. It was given the highest recommendation by my best friend, and it is a read I will never forget. It is taken from the case history of Lisa Erdman, an early patient of Sigmund Freud; the book explores her case of sexual hysteria and finds the way to self destructiveness. The scenes with Lisa and Dr.Freud are fascinating. They take her back into childhood and into her dreams. Lisa's erotic dreams are almost visions. They are premonitions to Lisa of death and destruction. Freud helps Lisa to resume her normal life as an opera singer, and we are brought into the world of opera as Lisa finds it. She remarries and settles in the Ukraine with her husband and step-son, and then the unraveling begins. Their harrowing adventures will leave you on the edge. As life as Lisa knows it begins to crumble, so do we.
"Lisa's story is told three times. Once, as a long letter of erotic ramblings by a psychotic, once in image steeped poetry, and finally, as narrative prose, in the dry tone of a doctor discussing a case, complete with musings and asides. By the end of the third rendition, the reader begins to understand something the eminent psychologist never will. That Anna is not only a product of, but a metaphor for the collective fall of European consciousness into madness that still scars the entire century."
T.Rex
'The White Hotel' is much like a mystery, and we are part of the unraveling. I was filled with melancholy and a dream like stance while reading this book. I have not read a book that is so well written. and at the same time lays groundwork of the extraordinary. A trip for Lisa becomes a trip that we will not soon forget. Highly Recommended. prisrob 2-18-07
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
In February 1982 I took my first edition hardback copy of The White Hotel to a pub in north London where I saw DM Thomas read from his novel. Afterwards he signed my book. I have never forgotten meeting him. I have read hundreds of novels since my first reading of The White Hotel in 1981, yet none have quite matched the intensity, imagination or sheer daring of this particular story. For anyone who is familiar with Freud's writings, it is sheer poetry to read Thomas's ingenious passages based on the Professor himself. Freud simply comes alive on the pages! It is difficult to write anything new about the holocaust, but The White Hotel has managed to. I believe that a movie is in the making as I write, but I don't think anything will quite match the sparing prose or the moving undercurrents of this book. Be afraid. Be very afraid. But it's worth reading it through to the end so that you can recall the final pages, as I do now, with a sense of sorrow and admiration.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
A formidable journey through the pathological psyche of twentieth...
This brilliant and sometimes brutal book combines fragments of narratives to give us a compelling tale that spans twentieth century Europe. Read more
Published 2 months ago by Roman Clodia
The White Hotel D M Thomas
This came second on the 1981 Man Booker list so I was
expecting great things. It is indeed a very clever
book but I found the imagined sex rather sickening. Read more
expecting great things. It is indeed a very clever
book but I found the imagined sex rather sickening. Read more
Published 11 months ago by Mrs. H. N. Robinson
The strangest sense of the unreal sinister world of being a victim
The other reviewers have given a concise and accurate appraisal; I just wanted to add my thoughts on the book. Read more
Published 12 months ago by H. Tee
a very fine book
I read little but this instinctively struck me as outstanding. Poised, eloquent and at times deeply beautiful. Read more
Published 16 months ago by peter
Still reading it after 30 years
This book just missed winning the Booker Prize in 1981, losing out, controversially, to Thomas Keneally's Schindler's Ark - controversially because the latter is not written as... Read more
Published 18 months ago by schlockhorror
Beyond doubt the most powerful book I have ever read
I've had to think hard before writing this review. Principally because I read this book some 25 years ago during a very difficult period in my life and I find it hard to recall it... Read more
Published on 23 Aug 2008 by EmmaH
Cassandra opens Pandora's 20th century box perhaps?
This book has come back to haunt me- several weeks after closing out on the third reading - it's so stimulating it demands reading again and again. Read more
Published on 30 Jun 2008 by bohobozo
Past, present & future
A really enjoyable read which takes you on a journey into the fevered mind of a young woman suffering from hysteria as she is treated by the psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud. Read more
Published on 3 Aug 2007 by PrideParkforever
Just read it
The reviews above say it all, and I have nothing significant to add to them. This is a magnificent book, stunning, a masterpiece. Read more
Published on 18 May 2007 by R. G. Brookman
Amazing...
This is an exhilrating read oscillating from the extreme of explicit sex to that of graphic violence, leaving you shocked and almost stupefied with disbelief that something like... Read more
Published on 5 July 2006 by Catfish
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