Hotel is a fuguelike layering of stories from three different periods of history in which successive explorers of a haunted ruin in southern Mexico share a single enigmatic fate. Where Garcia Marquez can verge on the pastoral, Guerard--with his profusion of phantoms, visions and emanations challenging the soundness of the mind--is more sinister.
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Book Description
Editorial Reviews
Amazon.com Review
Organized in three sections, this novel by Albert J. Guerard uses Mexico's Tehuantepec isthmus as the setting for flights of magical realism merged with fact. Part I takes place in the late 18th century when a New Orleans socialite descends on the town of Santa Rosalia in search of a missing renegade general. Part II is set half a century later as a retired schoolteacher, who had met the socialite of the opening section, returns to Santa Rosalia, where he finds a strange group of expatriates, including a character modeled after the poet Mina Loy. The closing section unfolds in 1982 when a young historian visits Santa Rosalia to research a dissertation on the now-familiar New Orleans socialite. Guerard uses a broad brush and a huge, colorful cast to evoke more than a century's worth of larger-than-life history.
From Publishers Weekly
In a novel as dense as the Mexican jungle in which it unfolds, Anglo fantasies collide with Indian and Latino realities as Guerard (Gabrielle; The Past Must Alter) mingles historical and fictional characters who, in search of lost loves or impossible dreams, descend on a remote resort hotel in Chimalapas. In 1870, Rosellen Maurepas, free-spirited New Orleans widow of a Civil War soldier, journeys to the jungle on a quixotic search for William Walker, the notorious buccaneer and real-life conqueror of Nicaragua. Next, we jump to 1922, when English poet Monica Swift?who is modeled on Mina Loy (1878-1966), bohemian literary lioness of Paris and Greenwich Village?returns to Mexico in search of her husband, Brian Desmond?a stand-in for Arthur Cravan, the flamboyant real-life poet, boxer, vagabond and nephew of Oscar Wilde who mysteriously disappeared in 1919. Monica is accompanied by the frequently drunk, black ex-heavyweight boxing champ Jack Johnson (1878-1946), who spent a year in Leavenworth prison because he transported a white woman?his future wife?across state lines. Another hotel guest in 1922, retired septuagenarian Boston schoolteacher Charles Stanfield, is seeking a Zoque Indian woman who was his servant and lover 52 years earlier. The final section, set in 1982, casts the hotel itself as the main character as Tulane grad student Eloise Deslonde pieces together the fates of those who preceded her. If this is all a bit labyrinthine and weighted with historical freight, it will seduce readers of an obsessive, romantic bent similar to that of the characters in this ingeniously crafted, colorfully peopled tale. (June) FYI: Interest in Loy's life should peak in June, when Farrar, Straus & Giroux will publish two related books: a biography by Carolyn Banks, Becoming Modern: The Life of Mina Loy, and a collection of Loy's work edited by Roger Conover, called The Last Lunar Baedeker.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.
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2 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Plowing through a tangled jungle,
By A Customer
This review is from: The Hotel in the Jungle (Hardcover)
Since I love Mexico and exotic settings, I was drawn to the title of this book. I expected maybe adventure, romance, or intriguing descriptions of the jungle. However, the book focused on a quirky cast of characters, flitting from one to the other and back and forth between two different times as it tried to parallel the lives of visitors to this hotel. I mostly felt confused about who was who, and felt no strong connection with the characters. They were mostly just strange and underdeveloped, and I couldn't relate to them. I wanted to be enchanted by this hotel. I wanted it to be a place I'd like to escape to myself, but it seemed dark and dreary, and full of people I wouldn't be comfortable with. I was disappointed in my hopes for an intriguing story.
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