Using a Georges Perec line about memory as his point of departure, Rolin, a French journalist and accomplished novelist (
Port-Soudan,
Tigre en papier), has fashioned in forensic detail a travelogue of hotel rooms around the globe. From Room 308 in the Polar Hotel of Khatanga, Russia, to Room 8 in the Au Bon Accueil in Saint-Nazaire, France, another Olivier Rolin scribbled these brief, diarylike accounts on scraps of paper to be discovered before he supposedly disappeared for good. Along with the exact measurements of the room, descriptions of furnishings—especially the mirrors, in which he notes his reflection—the missing narrator offers clues about himself; he does some underhanded dealing with a smalltime Russian crook, Gricha; he drops literary allusions, from Homer to Malcolm Lowry; and he likes women, frequently using his rooms as trysting spots. It seems as though he could be embroiled in an international Machiavellian plot. In the end, he pines for one unattainable woman, Mélanie Melbourne, who scolds him because he can't remember the room that signifies their impossible life together, Room 211 of the Hotel Crystal, in Nancy, France. Rolin's arch antinovel works as a kind of jokester hall of mirrors or a playful, literary
roman policier. (May) Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
"In this witty puzzler of a novel by Olivier Rolin (translated by Jane Kuntz), a traveler with the same name as the author begins each chapter with a description of a different hotel room he's stayed in around the world. These, in turn, become occasions for Rolin (or ''Rolin''?) to tell us of his adventures as a globe-trotting amateur spy and dashing lover. Frenchman Rolin engages in literary game-playing in
Hotel Crystal, crossing influences such as Vladimir Nabokov and Georges Perec." --
Entertainment WeeklyVisions of Italo Calvino's seminal postmodernist romp
Invisible Cities arise as the reader enters the cleverly fabricated world of this novel, originally published in French in 2004, from Rolin. The book's modus operandi is explained in a mock-editorial foreword declaring that "each [chapter] describes a hotel room in minute detail, then goes on to relate an anecdote involving the author and this particular location." Thus protagonist and narrator "Olivier Rolin" trots around the globe fulfilling miscellaneous diplomatic and criminal missions, indulging varied sophisticated tastes, including gratifying dalliances with often exotic, occasionally dangerous women.
One of the most enjoyable "serious" novels in many seasons. --
Kirkus Reviews"Rolin's mastery of language, along with his rich perceptions of locale and the human psyche, rewards a reader willing to attend." --Lee Fahnstock,
World Literature TodayHotel Crystal's conceit: A famous writer — who also may be a spy — has gone missing, and the only clue to his whereabouts is a packet of papers discovered in a Parisian train station lost-and-found. The bundle comprises a hodgepodge of hotel stationery, postcards, transit maps and end-papers from travel guides — the scrap paper of a man on the move. Composed on these sheets are descriptions of 43 hotel rooms from around the world.
Olivier Rolin's protagonist is a well-read scoundrel and international man of mystery. He travels around the world getting in and out of impossible scrapes with nefarious characters and holes up in strange hotels, where he composes compulsively detailed notes about his surroundings. But
Hotel Crystal is not a spy thriller; rather, it reads like
The Third Man told from Harry Lime's point of view.
...
The writing is dry, the humor droll and the descriptions of the rooms maddeningly repetitive, yet
Hotel Crystal is a hugely compelling read. One must diligently mark one's place for fear of getting lost — such is the sameness of the scenarios, but one never tires of the schemes. Rolin takes fiendish delight in skewering the redundancies of spy fictionand writing in the realist mode.
For all its robust wit and cosmopolitan embroidery,
Hotel Crystal details a Dorian Gray-like descent into the bottle. Our man in Khatanga, Port Said, Helsinki, isn't a spy so much as a "scribbler with too much drink in him," as Graham Greene so famously described Harry Lime's antagonist. For the lonely souls who check into the Hotel Crystals of the world and anesthetize themselves with expensive booze and cheap paperbacks, the dreary rooms are a sanctuary from perils real and imagined. --
LA Times"Olivier Rolin is a towering figure in French literature. . . . Rolin is a consummate artist who will speak profoundly to the American heart." --Robert Olen Butler
Hotel Crystal's conceit: A famous writer — who also may be a spy — has gone missing, and the only clue to his whereabouts is a packet of papers discovered in a Parisian train station lost-and-found. The bundle comprises a hodgepodge of hotel stationery, postcards, transit maps and end-papers from travel guides — the scrap paper of a man on the move. Composed on these sheets are descriptions of 43 hotel rooms from around the world.
Olivier Rolin's protagonist is a well-read scoundrel and international man of mystery. He travels around the world getting in and out of impossible scrapes with nefarious characters and holes up in strange hotels, where he composes compulsively detailed notes about his surroundings. But
Hotel Crystal is not a spy thriller; rather, it reads like
The Third Man told from Harry Lime's point of view.
...
The writing is dry, the humor droll and the descriptions of the rooms maddeningly repetitive, yet
Hotel Crystal is a hugely compelling read. One must diligently mark one's place for fear of getting lost — such is the sameness of the scenarios, but one never tires of the schemes. Rolin takes fiendish delight in skewering the redundancies of spy fictionand writing in the realist mode.
For all its robust wit and cosmopolitan embroidery,
Hotel Crystal details a Dorian Gray-like descent into the bottle. Our man in Khatanga, Port Said, Helsinki, isn't a spy so much as a "scribbler with too much drink in him," as Graham Greene so famously described Harry Lime's antagonist. For the lonely souls who check into the Hotel Crystals of the world and anesthetize themselves with expensive booze and cheap paperbacks, the dreary rooms are a sanctuary from perils real and imagined. --
LA Times"Olivier Rolin is a towering figure in French literature. . . . Rolin is a consummate artist who will speak profoundly to the American heart." --Robert Olen Butler, author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel
A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain"Rolin's mastery of language, along with his rich perceptions of locale and the human psyche, rewards a reader willing to attend." --Lee Fahnstock,
World Literature Today
