Ladies' Night at Finbar's Hotel (Paperback)

~ Dermot Bolger (Editor), (Author), Clare Boylan (Author), Emma Donoghue (Author), Anne Haverty (Author), Kate O'Riordan (Author), Deirdre Purcell (Author) "Sarah's eyes were as dry as paper..." (more)
Key Phrases: retracing steps, Finbar's Hotel, Neil Nolan, Mary Brazil (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

In this almost-all-girl reprise of the collaborative fiction Finbar's Hotel, Dermot Bolger skillfully weaves together eight chapters, each contributed by a different Irish writer, into a light, coherent, and highly readable novel about a culture in flux. The old Finbar's had been a dark, unchanging place, a "grade two" businessman's hotel in Dublin smelling of gravy and overcooked meat. The impressive new establishment, owned and renovated by the not-quite-respectable Dutch wife of a rock star, is a symbol of 21st-century Ireland--unquaint and anonymous, its chilly white surfaces are indistinguishable from those of a Hilton or a Marriott, despite the "Irish Bar" tucked into one corner of the lobby as a sop to tourists. Bolger is the only man among the writers included, and it is to his credit (or a handsome rebuttal to the old argument about "men's" and "women's" voices in fiction) that we can't tell his contribution from the others. None of the chapters lists its author--a brilliant if unsettling device--so that readers are left wondering whether the bestselling Maeve Binchy, for example, can be distinguished from Anne Haverty and Éilis Ní Dhuibhne, both of whom write poetry as well as prose. Other contributors are Kate O'Riordan, Deirdre Purcell, and Dublin natives Clare Boylan and Emma Donoghue.

Most of the female protagonists are returning to the Dublin of their youth after finding success elsewhere: a former maid comes back to meet the son she gave up for adoption; a faded movie starlet's luck takes a strangely positive turn; a nun looks for a man to sleep with. In "Da Da Da--Daa," an up-and-coming designer tries to corner the Dublin market for her soft, Celtic-inspired fashion line, and instead must endure a long encounter with her mentally ill father. Looking anxiously around the lobby as her room is being readied, Poppy realizes the risks she is taking just by showing up again in the city of her troubled childhood. And if she cannot make her mark as a designer in Dublin, what will success anywhere else mean? But at least for a moment, her assistant takes her mind off her own problems:

He returned her smile confidently, but he was mincing like a camp poodle, so she knew he was nervous. First time to Ireland for this second-generation Bronxer. Secretly, he'd expected to be lynched. So he swaggered, flaunting the homosexuality that had so repelled his Roscommon father. So nervous, he couldn't yet see that the fabled Ireland of his youth, the endless, monotonous, force-fed sentimentality of his parents, had no bearing on this new country. For all the world as though he couldn't see the blatant y.e.s. tattooed on the buttocks of the porter's young assistant.

Although the early chapters of Ladies' Night read more like short stories than the opening of a conventional novel, Bolger teases the reader with recurrent scenes and characters, so that the final stories bring satisfying conclusions to several mysteries--and not a few surprises. --Regina Marler

From Publishers Weekly

Fans of the original shabby landmark Dublin hotel memorialized in Bolger's serial short story collection Finbar's Hotel may be disconcerted at the new, hip management, but just as in the previous book, the ingenious formula brings together a host of Ireland's notable writers in an impressive collaboration. Seven authors, including Maeve Binchy, Clare Boylan, Anne Haverty and Deirdre Purcell, each contribute a chapter describing the adventures of different guests in the hotel, but none is attributed, so it's up to the reader to guess who wrote what. The volume opens with the news story that the once-famously seedy Finbar has been renovated by a rock-'n'-roll couple and has become Dublin's premier hot spot for celebrities and other glamorous folks. But not all the guests fit in so well in this posh milieu, making for unexpected encounters both dramatic and humorous. In Room 101, a plainspoken, humble Dublin man has offered to "help out" his beloved wife's high-powered best friend--by providing the sperm she needs to get pregnant. In Room 102, a clothing designer's first Dublin fashion show is disrupted by her overbearing, manic, ultimately tragic father, while another woman attempts to catch her husband in flagrante delicto in 106. Finbar's cosmopolitan refurbishment reflects the new Ireland's Celtic Tiger boosterism, but the chic atmosphere doesn't lend itself to the cohesion of a novel as well as did the nostalgic air of the old hotel. Only Detta Hamena in 105, a chambermaid from the old days, bridges the hostelry's history. However, the amusing crossovers of recurrent characters, such as the unnamed musical celebrity who appears in the charming nun-on-the-run tale and who throws a fit in another story, capture some of the hotel's charm and add wit and style to Bolger's creative concept.
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 276 pages
• Publisher: Harvest Books; First edition. edition (February 21, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0156008661
• ISBN-13: 978-0156008662
• Product Dimensions: 8 x 5.3 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 10.1 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (17 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #563,541 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

20 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Spend One Busy Night In a Dublin Hotel, April 4, 2000

By	Antoinette Klein (Hoover, Alabama USA) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

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This is a sometimes touching, sometimes funny story of one night in the nouveau chic Finbar's Hotel of Dublin. You will meet a woman getting impregnated by her best friend's husband, a career woman and her crazy father, a bride-to-be who gets the ultimate revenge on an old boyfriend who did her wrong, a nun looking for love in a most unorthodox manner, a mother reunited with the son she gave up for adoption, a woman who follows her husband to find out if he's cheating on her, and an aging actress who wants to recapture the past. Their paths all cross on one night at this hotel.

I chose the book because I am a big fan of Maeve Binchy and she wrote one of the chapters. Guessing which author wrote which chapter becomes a guessing game for the reader familiar with these authors.

This is not as good as Binchy's own novels, but definitely enjoyable and worth your time.

12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Not As Good As the Original, December 3, 2001

By	A. Ross (Washington, DC) - See all my reviews (TOP 100 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

This is the second "Finbar's Hotel," collection edited by Bolger, and this one is given over to seven Irish women writers: Maeve Binchy, Clare Boylan, Emma Donoghue, Anne Haverty, Eilis Ni Dhibhne, Kate O'Riordan and Deirdre Purcell. As in the first one (which had only two women, Anne Enright and Jennifer Johnston), each writer is given a "room" of the hotel, and creates a guest and a story to explain their presence at the hotel. And as in the first one, the writer of each story is not identified. One has to wonder at the point of such cleverness, as it is a directly impedes any attempt on the reader's part to discover a new writer to seek out in the future. For example, say I find two of the seven stories to be amazing, what am I to do? Buy one book by each of the seven writers and read all seven to figure out whose writing it was that I liked? Since there's no real purpose to keeping the authors secret (other than editorial conceit), why do it?

The strongest stories reside in rooms 101 and 106, which contain stories that revolve around marital infidelity, but have gentle reversals. Room 104 also concerns infidelity, but in this case, to God-and is much less interesting. Rooms 102, 103, 105 and the penthouse all contain guests coming from abroad and their stories all revolve around encounters with their past. Room 105, which concerns a mother meeting her son for the first time is perhaps the best of them, although the penthouse story is worth reading for the ending if nothing else. One sort of odd running thread is the clumsy mocking of Americans that appears in each story, which is in contrast the generally gentle tone of the collection. All in the all, the collection is inoffensive, but not quite as strong as the original Finbar's Hotel.

12 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Wonderful Secrets, March 27, 2000

By	Stacey Glenney (Red Bank, NJ) - See all my reviews

"Ladies Night at Finbars Hotel" is a great book. I am a big fan of Maeve Binchy's writing, and am waiting for her next book to come out. Meanwhile I saw she had contributed to this book, so I picked it up.

For those of you familiar with Binchy's writing, you'll notice how every chapter leads into the next, and the characters lives intertwine. The same happens in this book.

Each chapter revolves around a guest in a particular room. One truly becomes engrossed in their lives.

The writers all write along the same vein, so it is actually difficult to tell which author wrote which chapter. But that does not matter, all that matters is it is a good book which you will not want to put down. Order it today!