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20 of 21 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Rebegotten, March 14, 2002
This review is from: Hotel World (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. 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.
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10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Original, Captivating, and Incredibly Moving., May 15, 2003
This review is from: Hotel World (Paperback)
"Hotel World" can best be described as a book that 'haunts' you, from the first page, from the first paragraph, from the first word (which, amusingly, is 'wooooo-hoooo!'). Once picked up, it won't let you go until every word and idea is consumed, until the plot is exhausted. That, in my opinion, always makes a good read. "Hotel World" revolves around the tragic and untimely fate of a teenage swimmer, Sara, who plummets to her death in a dumb waiter. The first 'chapter' (if it can be called that; it's more of a vignette) begins with Sara's 'ghost', mislaid from her body, wandering the earth she has left and trying to make sense of it. The 'ghost' visits Sara's body in its coffin and begs it to give her insight into what happened on May 24th, the day she died. Sara's body explains that she had just fallen in love, suprisingly with a female employee of a watch shop, and that her fall in the dumb waiter had been a tragic accident: a £5 bet that went horribly wrong. If any of this sounds silly or hackneyed, it is the fault of my description only because Smith's writing is incredibly imaginative, insightful and unique. The melancholy theme of Sara's death is never over-played, and is conducted in a highly creative and contemporary manner. The strongest vignette in the book is that 'written' by Sara's younger sister, Clare. Although written in a somewhat baffling stream-of-consciousness style without punctuation, Clare's chapter is the most wonderfully evoking and emotional (without being too sentimental) account of grief I have ever read. Picking up tiny diamond-details with a fine-tooth comb, Ali Smith has an impossible eye for the subtle wonders of humanity: Clare, going to put onion peel in the rubbish bin, finds her sisters's swimming trophies in amongst the trash; she picks them out and tells her father that the rose bowl trophy has to be passed on to whoever wins the prize next year. Clare, remembering that dust is partial dead skin particles, keeps 'some of her sister' in a handkerchief in her top drawer, saving her sister from the hoover. The main body of the story is generated when Clare, dressed in Sara's spare uniform, goes to the Global Hotel and searches for the now hidden dumb waiter shaft, obsessed with finding out how many seconds it took the steel box to fall. She then unwittingly involves a cast of strangers who also play their part in the seamless beauty of "Hotel World": Penny, a bored and disenchanted journalist and Else, a homeless woman who is given a free room by the hotel receptionist, Lise, who is sick and tired and wants to rebel about the corporate chain, Global Hotels. They are all linked in some way, as Smith stitches an engaging and colourful patchwork of death, hope and the endurance of love. I read Smith's novel in around 4 or 5 hours; it was impossible to stop or delay finishing it because the characters, and the world they weaved, just captivated me. "Hotel World" leaves you feeling full and empty at the same time, enriched, confused, happy, futile, and -- if you're a writer -- jealous and frustrated. Her talents are enviable. The descriptions, visions and observations she uses in her book are profound, but never ficticious or pretentious. I must admit that I cringed slightly at the idea of a well-paid style writer and a homeless woman who collect pennies and wraps newspaper around her boots joining together to help a young girl, and by any other writer the story would seem false and preachy, but in Smith's hands it is true, tentative and remarkable. It is clear why this book was nominated for the Booker Prize and the Orange Fiction Prize, the calibre of writing is fantastic- although I wouldn't actively recommend it to anyone who finds anything other than the classic beginning-middle-end novel structure challenging, as it's fragmented style maybe be a bit too brave for the tastes of some.
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9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Excellent short novel, September 9, 2002
This review is from: Hotel World (Paperback)
I picked up this book because I was browsing through previous year's Booker winners and it looked like one of the more promising ones. The book has a certain energy that propels you through it and it never gets to be plodding or tedious. The central event of the book is the death of a maid, but I found the most interesting characters of the book to be neither the maid nor her grieving sister, but rather a magazine writer and a homeless woman. The unusual encounter that they have with each other and the completely different (and wrong) impressions that each has of the other are at once sad and laughable. The book is particularly effective in that there are no neatly tied up ends so it almost seems non-fictional. Another strength is the skill with which Smith depicts the street scene outside the hotel, which will ring true to anyone who has visited England. Since this book is short, it's easy to read at one sitting, which is what I'd recommend because of the stream-of-consciousness style.
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