Leaving Small's Hotel [Hardcover]

Eric Kraft (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 1998

Small's Hotel is where Peter and his wife have spent their lives, hosting visitors while Peter works on his memoirs. But as Peter nears 50, guests grow harder to come by, and soon the future of the hotel, and of every gift Peter dreams of giving his wife, are in jeopardy.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

By the time you reach page 2 of Eric Kraft's novel Leaving Small's Hotel you know you're in for a different kind of narrative: "I was sitting on a bench at the town dock, trying to drift into one of my other selves, when, instead, another self came drifting into me. A long time passed before I realized that ... I had imagined yet another self, but this time a self who assumed that he had imagined me. Over the years I have developed this other, outer, self into an alter ego and persona who, within his world, has devoted himself to the exploration and elaboration of my world and my self, for motives much like mine, since for him my world and my self are another place, another self, a vacation." The speaker is Peter Leroy, the protagonist of several of author Eric Kraft's earlier works and that other of whom he speaks is, of course, Kraft himself. Though Kraft soon removes himself from the story at hand, the reader cannot forget what Peter refers to as the "partnership, Kraft & Leroy" as Peter, himself a writer, weaves the strands of his own memoir, Dead Air, through stories about his life and travails running a failing hotel with his wife, Albertine, in the fictional community of Babbington, Long Island. It is no coincidence that a ventriloquist and his dummy figure prominently in the novel.

Lest you worry that Leaving Small's Hotel is one of those horridly self-conscious experimental novels, rest assured: Kraft's tender story of Peter and Albertine--still in love after so many years--is funny, perceptive, highly readable, and peopled with a cast of characters as intriguing as they are unique. In the end, it doesn't really matter whether this is Peter Leroy's daydream or Eric Kraft's; either way this novel is a dream come true.

From Kirkus Reviews

The latest installment (after At Home With the Glynns, 1995) in the ongoing chronicles of Peter Leroy (whose early volumes were published separately in the 1980s, then collected in Little Follies, 1992). Peter--Kraft's admitted alter ego (as a disarmingly metafictional ``Preface'' and ``Afterword'' make clear, ``We are not the same person, though we share a mind'')--has now reached middle age, and both career and midlife crises: His marriage is showing its age, and the small hotel (`'Small's'') that he and his wife Albertine run on an island near his hometown (Babbington, Long Island) is failing and may not be easy to unload. A plan is hatched: Like a very Scheherazade, Peter will offer readings from his ongoing memoirs (entitled Dead Air) to guests, a chapter a night for 50 nights, ending on the occasion of his 50th birthday. The stories Peter tellsdeftly interwoven with the story of his and Albertine's rueful compromises with the facts of time and changemake up an endearing history of ex-urban American life that consistently evokes Mark Twain, James Thurber, and their kindred. The result is a compact comic Decameron, a deadpan fantasia woven around several important, not to say obsessive, present concerns (mainly, courting realtors and potential buyers) and memories (young Peter's preadolescent crush on a schoolmate's mother; mock-Tom Swiftian misadventures with photography, radio transmission, and a planned flying-saucer detector; and his interrupted progress on a detective novel, Murder While You Wait, are especially choice). And if that weren't enough, Kraft/Leroy has (have?) a positive genius for chapter titles (``Bivalves from Outer Space,'' ``Artificial Insinuation'') and attention-getting understatements (``I decided to believe in flying saucers after seeing five of them and a naked woman while I was carrying the garbage cans out''). Add in an unsentimental and perfectly convincing portrayal of a happy marriage, and you have the recipe for a minor masterpiece: one of the most delightful novels of the decade. -- Copyright ©1998, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 346 pages
• Publisher: Picador USA; 1st Picado edition (May 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0312186894
• ISBN-13: 978-0312186890
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.8 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #5,030,033 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Eric Kraft grew up in Babylon, New York, on the South Shore of Long Island, where he was for a time co-owner and co-captain of a clam boat, which sank. He studied English at Harvard, where he invented the character Peter Leroy while dozing over a German lesson during his first year. The following year, he married his muse, Madeline Canning; they now have two sons.

After earning a Master's Degree from the Harvard Graduate School of Education, Kraft taught school in the Boston area for a while, moonlighting as a rock music critic for the Boston Phoenix. After a series of positions in editing and publishing, Kraft and his wife founded Kraft & Kraft, an editorial-services company for educational publishers. Throughout the years, he wrote daily, trying to discover the stories that Peter Leroy had to tell.

Eric Kraft is the recipient of a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts and was, briefly, chairman of PEN New England. He is also a recipient of the John Dos Passos Prize for Literature.

Learn more at www.erickraft.com.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An exquisite and unique experience, April 29, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Leaving Small's Hotel (Hardcover)

Eric Karft has created a world that a reader can experience in various layers. Ach! Why try to compete with Mr. Kraft? His analogy of his books is that of a robust, zesty clam chowder. Do endulge yourself. You will be reading along, following the adventures of Peter Leroy, thinking this is perhaps a mild diversion of a book when a startling insight floats up on the page, or a trenchant observation astounds and delights you. I read this book a year ago (I got it as soon as it came out in May, 98 as I am A BIG Eric Kraft fan) and still think of it at least weekly. I anxiously await the next offering from Mr. Kraft, who brightens my world and spirit immeasurably through his work.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An intelligent, compassionate, funny book., June 12, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: Leaving Small's Hotel (Hardcover)

Peter Leroy writes his life story in an attic study as his wife Albertine renovates a quiet hotel on an island in Bolotomy Bay. When Small's Hotel starts to fail, Peter questions the value of literature in our time as well. Hotel guests want to ride jet skies, and editors want more sex and violence in the adventure books Peter writes for boys. Thus, "leaving Small's Hotel" is Eric Kraft's profound exploration of the viability of the imagination in a world that's lost all sense of proportion. That's our world, of course, and we need to learn from this intelligent, compassionate, funny book.

5.0 out of 5 stars Another enjoyable read from the Balzac of our time., March 22, 1999

By 

Paul M. Banas "pbanas" (San Francisco, CA United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Leaving Small's Hotel (Hardcover)

Peter Leroy does it again in this tale of the last days of Small's Hotel. As Peter tries to save the failing inn, he creates a theme event to draw more guests to the hotel. This event, a series of nightly readings, is the far greater feast for Kraft fans. Each story is another chapter in the "personal history, adventures, experiences, & observations of Peter Leroy (so far)." And each perfectly captures the suspension of disbelief of childhood, the mixture of fantasy and reality (in the moment and the memory). For readers, especially between 40 and 65, perfect moments of insight and beauty are to be found within these small tales. The new adventures, along with all of Kraft's works, are to be savored on sunny late afternoons when time permits idle nostalgia of our post-war youth.