Five people- four are living, three are strangers, two are sisters, one is dead.
Ali Smith was born in Inverness in 1962. She is the author of Free Love and Other Stories, Like, Other Stories and Other Stories, Hotel World, The Whole Story and Other Stories, The Accidental, Girl Meets Boy, The First Person and Other Stories, There but for the, Artful, How to be both, and Public library and other stories. Hotel World was shortlisted for the Booker Prize and the Orange Prize and The Accidental was shortlisted for the Man Booker and the Orange Prize. How to be both won the Baileys Prize, the Goldsmiths Prize and the Costa Novel Award and was shortlisted for the Man Booker and the Folio Prize. Ali Smith lives in Cambridge and her next novel is forthcoming in 2016.
Ali Smith has got style, ideas and punch. Read her
*Jeanette Winterson*
When it was published in the U.K. earlier this year, the latest offering from Scottish writer Smith (Free Love) was made an Orange Prize finalist and shortlisted for the prestigious Booker Prize. Featured are five women whose lives (and a death) overlap at the Global Hotel, a generic establishment in an unnamed city in England. The novel begins with Sara, a chambermaid who plummeted to her death in one of the hotel's dumbwaiters, as her ghost tries to recollect what it was like to be alive. Else, a homeless woman who sits on the concrete in front of the hotel, is invited by Lise, the receptionist, to stay for a free night. Penny, a freelance travel journalist thrown into the mix, looks for ways to curb her boredom and unwittingly helps Sara's sister, Clare, in her search for Sara's spirit. Smith expertly fuses humor and pathos throughout the novel. When Sara's ghost visits her corpse in the grave, it's none too happy to see her; when it won't answer her questions, she harasses it by singing songs from West End musicals. And when the disgruntled Lise lets Else into the hotel, she contemplates throwing in a free breakfast, as an extra snub to her employers. Smith's narrative style varies with each character and is generally exciting and quite successful, although some readers will find the acrobatics tiring. The connections she makes between the characters across class lines and even across the line between life and death are driven home in a beautifully lyrical coda. National advertising. (Jan. 15) Forecast: Although it probably won't create the kind of stir in the States that it did in England, Hotel World should do well if it scores a few prominent enthusiastic reviews. Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.
"Ali Smith has got style, ideas, and punch. Read her."-Jeanette Winterson
"Hotel World is everything a novel should be: disturbing,
comforting, funny, challenging, sad, rude, beautiful.--The
Independent (London)
"In this voice from beyond the grave Ali Smith has
created the perfect literary ghost...imbued with a powerful sense
of wonder at the minutiae of everyday sensuality...and her
beautiful, vivid descriptions are reinforced by a sharp,
unsentimental tongue."-The Times (London) "Ali Smith's
remarkable novel HOTEL WORLD....is a greatly appealing read. Smith
is a gifted and meticulous architect of character and
voice."--The Washington Post
"The heart of Scottish writer Ali Smith may belong to good
old-fashioned metaphysics -- to truth and beauty and love beyond
the grave -- but her stylistic sensibility owes its punch to the
Modernists. She's street-savy and poignant at once, with a brutal
sense of irony and a wonderful feel for literary economy. There's a
kind of stainless-steel clarity at the center of her fiction. .
."--The Boston Globe
"HOTEL WORLD is that rare experiment, a novel with style to spare .
. . despite all the tricks, all the tweaks of language and
literature, what you remember about HOTEL WORLD is Smith's
evocation of the anguish that results when a life ends, her
rendering of the sadness at separating from the living world and
the loneliness of staying behind. What a death. What a life. What a
book."--San Antonio Express-News ." . . in Smith's hands,
this slender plot serves as an excuse for a delightfully inventive,
exuberant, fierce novel of which the real star is not the dead
Sara, or any of the living characters, but the author's vivid,
fluent, highly readable prose. HOTEL WORLD was a
well-deserved finalist last year for two prestigious British
prizes: the Orange Prize and the Booker Prize. . . . I can't begin
to paraphrase all that this dazzling book conveys about humanity
and mortality . . ."
- Margot Livesey, Newsday "Ali who? Hotel what? Even for
people who follow contemporary British literature, neither the name
nor the title meant a lot. They do now. HOTEL WORLD makes a
striking impression. It's a challenging, often bleak but affecting
journey through the lives of four young women united by the death
of another . . . What an introduction to Ali Smith.
- Minneapolis Star Tribune "HOTEL WORLD is that rare
experiment, a novel with style to spare . . . despite all the
tricks, all the tweaks of language and literature, what you
remember about HOTEL WORLD is Smith's evocation of the
anguish that results when a life ends, her rendering of the sadness
at separating from the living world and the loneliness of staying
behind. What a death. What a life. What a book."
-Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel "HOTEL WORLD is compelling . . .
precisely because it suggests shifting yet coherent perspectives
rather than simplifying lives into rigid, inert realities. Most
impressively, Smith has mastered sophisticated literary techniques,
which never intrude or bog down a delectable narrative of human
perception and rumination. Apart from establishing Ali Smith as a
novelist with the skills of a Martin Amis and Samuel Beckett
combined, HOTEL WORLD is a damn good read." -The San Francisco
Chronicle "Wonderfully inventive and boldly lyrical, HOTEL WORLD is
an exhilarating read. A chambermaid careens to her death in a
broken dumbwaiter, and her dissipating spirit sings a paean to
earthly existence. . . . Newly published in the U.S., Ali Smith's
thrilling meditation on life, transience, class, and the material
world was an Orange Prize finalist and was shortlisted for the
Booker Prize." -INSIDE BORDERS "Courageous and startling. I doubt
that I shall read a tougher or more affecting novel this year."
-Jim Crace
Ali Smith has got style, ideas, and punch. Read her. Jeanette
Winterson
Hotel World is everything a novel should be: disturbing,
comforting, funny, challenging, sad, rude, beautiful. The
Independent (London)
In this voice from beyond the grave Ali Smith has
created the perfect literary ghost imbued with a powerful sense of
wonder at the minutiae of everyday sensuality and her beautiful,
vivid descriptions are reinforced by a sharp, unsentimental tongue.
The Times (London)
"Ali Smith's remarkable novel HOTEL WORLD....is a greatly appealing
read. Smith is a gifted and meticulous architect of character and
voice." The Washington Post
"The heart of Scottish writer Ali Smith may belong to good
old-fashioned metaphysics -- to truth and beauty and love beyond
the grave -- but her stylistic sensibility owes its punch to the
Modernists. She's street-savy and poignant at once, with a brutal
sense of irony and a wonderful feel for literary economy. There's a
kind of stainless-steel clarity at the center of her fiction. . ."
The Boston Globe
"HOTEL WORLD is that rare experiment, a novel with style to spare .
. . despite all the tricks, all the tweaks of language and
literature, what you remember about HOTEL WORLD is Smith's
evocation of the anguish that results when a life ends, her
rendering of the sadness at separating from the living world and
the loneliness of staying behind. What a death. What a life. What a
book."--San Antonio Express-News
." . . in Smith's hands, this slender plot serves as an excuse for
a delightfully inventive, exuberant, fierce novel of which the real
star is not the dead Sara, or any of the living characters, but the
author's vivid, fluent, highly readable prose. HOTEL WORLD
was a well-deserved finalist last year for two prestigious British
prizes: the Orange Prize and the Booker Prize. . . . I can't begin
to paraphrase all that this dazzling book conveys about humanity
and mortality . . ."
Margot Livesey, Newsday
"Ali who? Hotel what? Even for people who follow contemporary
British literature, neither the name nor the title meant a lot.
They do now. HOTEL WORLD makes a striking impression. It's a
challenging, often bleak but affecting journey through the lives of
four young women united by the death of another . . . What an
introduction to Ali Smith.
Minneapolis Star Tribune
"HOTEL WORLD is that rare experiment, a novel with style to
spare . . . despite all the tricks, all the tweaks of language and
literature, what you remember about HOTEL WORLD is Smith's
evocation of the anguish that results when a life ends, her
rendering of the sadness at separating from the living world and
the loneliness of staying behind. What a death. What a life. What a
book."
Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel
"HOTEL WORLD is compelling . . . precisely because it suggests
shifting yet coherent perspectives rather than simplifying lives
into rigid, inert realities. Most impressively, Smith has mastered
sophisticated literary techniques, which never intrude or bog down
a delectable narrative of human perception and rumination. Apart
from establishing Ali Smith as a novelist with the skills of a
Martin Amis and Samuel Beckett combined, HOTEL WORLD is a damn good
read." The San Francisco Chronicle
"Wonderfully inventive and boldly lyrical, HOTEL WORLD is an
exhilarating read. A chambermaid careens to her death in a broken
dumbwaiter, and her dissipating spirit sings a paean to earthly
existence. . . . Newly published in the U.S., Ali Smith's thrilling
meditation on life, transience, class, and the material world was
an Orange Prize finalist and was shortlisted for the Booker Prize."
INSIDE BORDERS
Courageous and startling. I doubt that I
shall read a tougher or more affecting novel this year. Jim
Crace"
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