26 of 28 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Was I reading the same book?, February 9, 2006
I hate to put a damper on all the glowing reviews here but I personally did not see much humor while reading this book and certainly would not call it a fun read.
Charlotte Heath, the main character, was sick in bed for the last 10 months with what was either a form of polio, or a brain disease. The first time she felt well enough to venture outside the house, she found her husband Hays in the arms of another woman. Not knowing what else to do, or where to go she headed off to friends of hers in nearby Boston and they ended up taking her to a hotel where the former Heath cook, Mrs Petty was now working.
Once Charlotte arrived at the hotel, she found out that Mrs Petty wont speak to her and was shocked to find Aunt Lilly who happens to be her doctor and her husbands uncles wife.
As Charlotte stays on at the hotel, against eveyones better judgement, she meets a porter named Arthur and begins a sexual relationship with him while also trying to figure out why her husband might have been cheating on her and what she should do about it.
A Private Hotel for Gentle Ladies had a really interesting premise and from all the glowing reviews I figured this one would be a winner. What I ended up finding was a book that went around in circles only to have an ending that totally needed to be changed. The first chapter alone was all about the bells that should have been put on her sleigh so that her husband would have heard her coming before he leaned in to kiss the mystery woman.
I would not call this one of the worst books I ever read but all the other reviews make it seem like a must read. I obviously did not get the same reaction.
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19 of 20 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Hilarious And I Admit A Fun Sorta Read, November 27, 2005
Okay, someone passed this book on to me because she said I don't read enough "fun things". I figured I'd make her happy by investing a day in this romance novel with a literary bent, but the fact is, it wasn't bad at all! In among its social statements was a funny fantasy about a woman from 1900, whose dream marriage to a wealthy Bostonian is smothering her to death, so in the face of her boredom, malaise, and anger over her husband's unfaithfulness, she emerges from a long confinement to undertake a stay at a certain hotel with a reputation for...um...making ladies very, VERY happy. The fact is, the impressively well-formed young male employees at the instiution make room service calls that include more than just breakfast, lunch and dinner. Though this is not an erotic book, and it is fairly well-composed, it is an interesting twist on the idea that in the past only men got to have fun in hotels of a certain sort. I was amused that I actually read this book (wow, don't I sound snobby) and I had to laugh at the fact I wanted to read it through to the conclusion in one sitting. Yeah, I really wanted to know how it ended! It's a pretty funny and charming tale that doesn't slide into fluffiness and delivers what its cover blurb promises. The ending could have been tweaked and it didn't need the developments that put a damper on the niceness of what the hotel had going on, but adversity is the grist of plot, I'm told. Three and seven-eights stars but heck let's round it to four.
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12 of 13 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
A Good Start, But Not Much Else., June 12, 2006
I had such high hopes for this book, based on its description. And in spite of the author's sometimes hard-to-follow writing style - she does love to start in one place and wander quite far from the original subject before finally winding her way back - for the first few chapters I managed to hold on to those hopes.
But in the end, I would have to classify this book as 80 percent disappointment.
Charlotte is set up to be a very sympathetic character: Married to a man she loves, but trapped in the family home surrounded by a seemingly endless supply of in-laws (also all residents of the family home), none of whom have ever made much of an effort to make her feel a part of the family. Charlotte has been unable to bear a child to term in all the years of the marriage, and her 10 months in a sickbed seem to have put the final distance between her and her husband, Hays.
Finally, after an inexplicable recovery (the author never bothers to give any hint of why Charlotte is suddenly well after all this time), Charlotte is off to surprise her husband at the wake for one of his recently deceased uncles. But what she encounters is Hays and a mystery woman, just about to share a kiss.
Calling in a favor from the local baker and his wife, Charlotte finds herself at the hotel of the title, facing a chilly reception from Mrs. Petty - the former cook in Charlotte's in-law's house - who had been the one to first tell Charlotte about the hotel. (Though not about the details of what goes on there.)
To this point, the book was enjoyable. But once Charlotte lands in the hotel, the book heads into a decline from which it never recovers.
The efforts of the hotel's owner, his staff and Charlotte's Aunt Lily - a surprise "regular" at the hotel - to get Charlotte out of the hotel were understandable, if a little tedious. Arthur's attachment to Charlotte is pretty sudden, and regardless of how she feels about Hays' cheating on her, it seems a little odd that she would embark on an affair with Arthur quite so easily.
And unless the author is planning a sequel, there were things in this book that just didn't seem to have a reason for being. Charlotte's introduction to the hotel owner's wife and her servant, for example. An interesting enough scene, but to what purpose?
The artist who created all the paintings in the hotel - introduced, then killed off.
Mrs. Petty and her children - suddenly packed off to another situation, for the good of the children. Sure, we learn who the father of one of the children is, but again - why?
Charlotte's parents, who have been conspicuously absent from Charlotte's thoughts for a good portion of the book - there's no purpose to their appearance at the end, nor really to Charlotte's search for them.
The ending, as mentioned by another reviewer, is the worst part of the book. Why does Charlotte do what she does when she leaves the hotel? Is it guilt, a desire for reconciliation?
Charlotte frustrates me...I don't know what she wants, and most of the time she doesn't seem to know, either. In the end, I didn't care much about this book, except to wonder about the several chapters that seemed to have been lopped off the end. Maybe they would have wrapped things up in a better fashion.
I won't read this book again, and I certainly can't recommend it to others.
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