Like tears from a star... (Hotel World - Ali Smith)

Member Name: pje

Product:	Hotel World - Ali Smith
Date:	24/09/01 (133 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Entrancing, elegiac and moving.

Disadvantages: Sad

Woooooooo-

hooooooo



is how it starts. with an irresistable first page that reminded me of the close rapport between two dooyooers. But no, the author is Ali Smith, it's not an Alki Murphy collaboration.

It opens with the thoughts of a nineteen-year-old chambermaid Sara Wilby as she plummets - and after she has plummeted - four floors down to her death inside a dumb waiter at the Global Hotel where she works. Post-mortem fiction seems to be all the rage at the moment, doesn't it?

We see the events of one night from five different viewpoints,
one by one, like five interconnected short stories.

Sarah: recalling her final memories as they slowly fade.

Else: a homeless person begging on the street outside.

Lisa: the hotel's clock-watching receptionist, who takes Else in and gives her a free room for the night. (Well, she is a woman, as is the author. Politicians and terrorists are mostly men. Go figure.)
Penny: a style-journalist for a broadsheet who is staying in the hotel (and who isn't the greatest advert for the human race.)

Clare: Sarah's younger sister. Bereft, she sits across the road from the hotel, waiting for a chance to go inside and see where her sister fell. (Written as a stream of consciousness this section is truly moving at times.)


There is little interaction between the characters, and when their paths do cross, it is as strangers, strange ships passing in the night. They all seem to have an emptiness in their lives.

"Five people: four are living, three are strangers, two are sisters, one is dead." as the blurb on the back says. It also, quite rightly describes the book as "unsettling and disturbing", exaggeratingly labels it "wildly funny", and very accurately applies the words "haunting" and "mesmerizing".

It made me feel like a lonely person looking out of a
window
on a rainy afternoon, while listening to Sting singing "Fragile".
I felt quite an affinity for the author through her characters,
so I was disappointed that one of them (Duncan - who was deeply affected by witnessing Sarah's fall) wasn't explored.

Hotel World was shortlisted for the Orange Prize (it didn't win) and the Booker Prize (which I don't think it will win either.)
I'm glad I read it. It's sad but beautiful, with funny intervals.
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Summary: