Customer Reviews

The White Hotel

5 star:		(30)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(6)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I could throw around superlatives and they would not have much impact. Too many reviews are written about mediocre books that one would think them, from the reviewers reaction, modern masterpieces. "Flawlessly-rendered scenes of incomparably lyrical, powerful, acute, seamless, ineffable, gorgeous, unassailable, tender, dynamic, lush, titillating, cerebral, divine, a libidinous, self-revelatory paean to the inexpressible in art and life that packs an emotional wallop!," or some such phrase.

Sometimes a person just has to come right out and say "This one grabbed me by the rear," and let it go at that. This is a book that really has to be experienced first-hand. My only word of advice is not to give up on the book too soon. It's absolutely unclear in the first 40 or 50 pages where Thomas is taking you and he doesn't present too promising a train ride at that stage. Settle in for the journey. Look out the window and watch as the landscape starts becoming more recognizable. The landmarks with which you thought you were earlier familiar, start revealing themselves in entirely new patterns. For this is a novel about revelation, more than anything else. Readers just have to trust that "all will be revealed" by novel's end, and it is, magnificently.

Thomas performs a near-miraculous feat in this novel. Reading The White Hotel is akin to looking through a an extremely high-powered telescope and what at first looks likes fuzzy, indiscreet blurs, become unbelievably colorful and complex nebulae and galaxies as the instrument's focus is adjusted. The book begins with a long poem, full of erotic imagery and near-incoherent description, that we are startled to learn is written by a woman. Following this is a prose version of the story that we learn is written by a young woman who is a semi-successful Opera-singer who comes to Sigmund Freud for analysis as she suffers from acute psychosomatic pains in her left breast and her womb. She will become the Frau Anna G. of Freud's famous case-study (Freud's "Wolfman" also appears as a peripheral character in the novel). Thomas lets us in on Freud's analysis, as well as his ambiguous feelings towards his patient. At several stages, Freud is ready to throw up his hands and tell her that he won't continue his treatment as he feels she is not forthcoming enough to make any real progress. He always relents, however, because he senses that "Lisa" (the Opera-singers real name) has enough redeeming attributes to warrant his time.

As the novel progresses, we learn more and more about Lisa's past and the seminal childhood incident (occurring when she is 3-years-old and vacationing with her parents in Odessa) that estranged her from her mother, and more particularly, from her father. This will be the central motif of the novel as well as Lisa's Cassandra-like ability to see the future through her dreams and her imaginative powers. If this begins to strike you as psychological clap-trap, rest assured it isn't. The novel at no point devolves into psycho-babble or pretentiousness. Everything in the novel, we come to learn, is there for a reason. There is absolutely nothing amateurish about the master-plan and the sublime architecture that Thomas erects (no Freudian pun intended). This is as carefully-constructed a novel as anything I've ever read.

I am certainly not going to spoil the read for anyone by giving away the novel's ending, but suffice it to say that it's as powerful as anything-written in the past 30 years, at minimum. The only drawback to this book is that I didn't give it enough of a chance on first-encounter. Hopefully, that won't be the case with those reading this review.

The White Hotel is a work of such genius that it deserves to be read by all. The story which connects a nuerotic opera singer in the 1920's who is treated by Sigmund Freud and the holocaust of world war two is both deeply moving and shocking. The first half, through the use of poetry, letters, pschological analysis and dreams gives the reader great insight into the main protagonist's mind and life. The second half sets her life among the many who are trapped in the winds of hell that was the holocaust. Thomas shows us that each life is valuable and by focussing on one who would perish in the murder at Babi Yar he reenforces the truth that terms such as "holocaust" leave us unconnected with the reality of the horror, and thus allows us to forget. By depicting one persons fragility and inner thoughts the reader cannot dissasociate themselves from her death. The novel leaves the reader gasping for breath and led me to stare blankly afterwards lost in the possibilty that such inhumanity towards fellow human beings is possible. This novel, Solzhenitsen's work and others such as Primo Levi ensure that the mass murders of millions this century will never be forgotten. It is a great read, poetical and at times frankly realistic, and most importantly, it is a work which (something so rare nowdays) deserves to be read

This is the kind of book you need to read twice, at least. The second time I read it was when I realized that the long, surrealistic dream-poem in the first part was actually a premonition of horrific events to come. Lisa is haunted by this premonition her entire life, seeking psychiatric therapy to explain it. She is also haunted by mysterious "hysterical" pains in the parts of her body that, years later, will be brutalized. I love touches in the poem like the orange trees falling into the lake and vanishing -- a premonition of her brief hope of her and Kolya going to Israel - a hope which is also defeated. Faced with the horrifying premonition of the Holocaust, Lisa's psyche chooses to change the horror into something beautiful and mysterious -- the White Hotel.

An extraordinary book, historical in its way, yet put together like the movements of a musical composition. Introduced by Sigmund Freud, the book's first three movements consist of the erotic fantasies and case-history of one of his female patients, overlapping, expanding, and gradually turning into almost normal narrative. But then the story takes a different course with the convulsions of the century, and becomes a testament of the Holocaust, harrowing and chillingly authentic. Only at the end does the fantasy element return, pulling together the earlier themes into a kind of benediction. I originally questioned whether the book cohered as a whole, but as it has lingered in my memory I have become aware of structural unities that are entirely satisfying.

I am submitting this review after also reading W.G. Sebald's AUSTERLITZ, another Holocaust novel that stalks its subject from an unexpected angle. It makes me wonder whether the frontal approach of straight narrative is possible any more, but here are two masterpieces that not only succeed brilliantly in their own genre but chart new directions for the modern novel as a whole. Both writers recognize that some events are so powerful as to warp the consciousness of entire generations. While Sebald looks for traces of this trauma like an archaeologist studying past artifacts, Thomas moves in the opposite direction, starting at the beginning of the century, when Freudian psychology made it possible for the first time to trace the rifts in the human psyche that would ultimately lead to such inhumanity.

His greatest literary work to date has taken the most reprhensible crimes against humanity and conveyed them through a sexual psychosis background/dialogue. The disturbing brilliance of that provokes the reader to examine oneself individually, and to judge humanity corporately. This book is not for the light-hearted. It is profound and deeply intellectual while at the same time subtle and emotionally challenging. One cannot read this book and not have some kind of emotional reaction to it. Upon my first read-through (this is a book that takes several reads to fully absorb all the nuances and insights), I was disturbed by its presentation. On the second read-through, I was amazed by the artistry of the picture painted by the words written. This novel will have a forceful impact upon the reader. You will come away fully embracing the writing or standing in judgement of the writer. There are no inbetween views. This novel takes the story of a young woman as she lives life in the midst of the Holocaust, and conveys the depravaties, the dehumanizing activities, the destructions that were exerted against humanity. A unique combination of massive war crimes and psycholanalysis makes this a book near impossible to put down. If you want a true challenge in your reading, if you want to be provoked out of your personal comfort zone, if you want something to deeply ponder, then look no further than The White Hotel. You'll go to that place and not return the same individual.

D. M. Thomas' accomplishment in The White Hotel is unutterably profound. The book's power has stayed with me for more than twenty years and I will take its redemptive force with me to my grave. His prose has the force of the finest classical poetry inflamed with the psyche's deepest passions. The tale he tells of Lisa Erdman through three breath-taking almost musical variations on the seminal events of her life make a novel of unsurpassed humanity and give the reader the effect of having been immolated by the ineffable mystery of existence.

This novel on the surface seems to be a shocking exploitation of human sexuality and historical violence. However, the reader takes more away from this novel than an uncomfortable silence; this book beautifully weaves Virgin-Christ and Freudian imagery into a deeply introspective look into the mind -- the place where desires, memories, and even the capacity for the future lay. The heroine, Lisa Ergman, is treated by Freud and is the basis for his notorious "Anna G." case study. Thomas delves more deeply into this woman's life, illuminating the discrepancies and the events which lead up to her debilitating condition. Then he ties her suffering in the mind into the suffering of all humanity in the Holocaust. This is a book from which the more concerned and deeper reader can take away a valuable lesson in the human roots of psychoanalysis and the inner workings of humanity -- the torture and ecstasy from within and without. "The White Hotel" raises serious concerns about the validity of our own memories and the value of dissecting it. I would have given it five stars, but the last section of the novel seems tacked on and inappropriate.

I had a warning before reading this book, it was that nothing would ever seem the same and my awareness of my own femimine sexuality would escalate. Well he was right on both parts.

This book is so beautiful and so hard to explain. It's one story told in three ways: Poetic, symbolic and narrative. Some people do find it confusing, but it is absolutely necessary to re-read the book many times, only then will you see how each part is intertwined with the other, how the devastating end is actually told in each of the first two parts, told in those different ways. It makes you look at yourself in different ways too.

I read this book on holiday (in Israel!). I didn't put it down, reading it from cover to cover 8 times. I dreamt the story for many nights over the next two months. My heart and soul soar just thinking about it. I changed after reading this book. If you understand it, if you let your soul be touched by it, you will change too. Luxuriate in its warmth, and wrap yourself in its imaginary.

Finally, The White Hotel is one of only a handful of books I could not imagine living without.

A demandingly-structured work whose parts I didn't connect until the second or third time I read it. Frau Anna G. is treated by Freud for hysterical pains in her womb and breast; Freud assumes all this arises from incidents in her childhood and from her repressed sexuality. A point he does not pick up is that Anna G has second sight. As the story unfolds, we discover that her pains are indeed the expression of pain, but pain arising from events in her future.

I read The White Hotel in '82, the paper back emblazoned with the promise "soon to be a major film". 18 years on I gather that major film is finally in hand, again. Frankly I'd say this book was unfilmable. Is it genius? Maybe, if genius can be a one-off occurrence. D. M. Thomas' other fiction (mostly out of print now) is distinctly second-rate compared to this, the only work in which his faux-naif narrative style works properly.

That said, the depiction of Anna G as a symbol for Europe literally buried by barbarism is superbly achieved, and 18 years on I'm still reading it; if this isn't brilliance then it's not far off. Profound, disturbing, extravagantly sexual.

It is the story of a lovely, very neurotic Jewish girl named Lisa Erdman who goes into therapy with Freud himself because she suffers from a chronic psycho-somatic pain in her left breast and pelvis. He sort of cures her so she can go on to lead a more or less normal life before being killed by the Nazis in a lime pit. Thomas' goal in writing this book was to show that any individual human life, no matter how seemingly insignificant or inconsequential, is priceless. The first half of the book basically chronicles Freud's sessions with Lisa. She retells this recurring dream of hers in which she meets a man on a train going nowhere. They go together to a fluid, serene white hotel, where they make love every night and day, amidst a series of horrible accidents and tragedies that befall many of the other guests staying there. After revealing this dream, Lisa tells Freud about things she remembers from her childhood, and other events, tragic and mediocre, that shaped her life. Freud then interprets the dream, using the things she told him about her life. The result of this deciphering is a great self- revelation for Lisa, as she begins to understand her failed relationship with her father and why this resulted in her ruined marriage; she "learns" of the adulterous relationship between her mother and her uncle, knowledge she already had but had repressed for so long she practically forgot about it. These stresses in her life had caused her neurosis, and confronting these memories makes her pain disappear. Reading Freud's diagnosis becomes almost tedious halfway through the novel, but the length and intricacy of them, as well as the attentive whole-heartedness with which Freud renders his treatment, force the reader to appreciate the amount of work that can go into the betterment of one human life. It is this work, this creation of memories, that gives life its inestimable value. And Thomas very clearly makes the point, at the end of the book, that! every single person killed in the Holocaust, every person that ever lived, has a tale to tell that is just as interesting, just as amazing, just as precious, as Lisa's. This book strengthened a deep appreciation that I already had for life. And this appreciation has dramatically shaped my behavior and thoughts, not only those towards myself, but towards others. As a result, I try to be kind and considerate. I want the people I touch to develop the same appreciation that I have for life. If everybody had this appreciation, there would be no such thing as racism, bureaucrats would help the starving children in Africa with a greater sense of urgency, we wouldn't see the news of senseless violence splattered across the headlines, and there would be no need for the sin we call war.