Hotel World: Ali Smith

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I visualised the homeless woman, Else, as favourite author A.L. Kennedy as seen in this photo where she peers at the camera in a very cryptic way, Penny is a guest at the hotel. She is a journalist for The World. She has to stay there but is not happy about it. Hotels were such a sham. She was bored out of her mind. She does have some interaction with two other people: she hears a noise outside her room and sees someone trying to unscrew something off the wall (only later do we learn who and why). She tries to help and then gets help from another guest, who we know is Else. The activity is all somewhat mysterious. Penny even later accompanies Else on a walk around the town. Hotel World is everything a novel should be: disturbing, comforting, funny, challenging, sad, rude, beautiful.— The Independent (London)

Hotel World by Ali Smith: 9780385722100 | PenguinRandomHouse

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 . . ." So, there are always parts I like. Some I even like a lot. And that is always when the author lets us get close to a character. But you see, this is Literature with a capital l, so there is much stream and conciousness and lots of parts that are hard to understand on purpose. And the only purpose seems to be to make it harder to get. If I find myself wondering "wait is this section from the point of a ghost too or is that a random other woman?" and feel a little stupid for 'not getting it', it doesn't make me wanna dive it deeper, it makes me wanna hurl the book across the room. Sara Wilby's tragic death, spiralling down in a dumbwaiter, begins with the voice of Sara's 'gossamer ghost'. 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)

Summary

Smith's sidelong approach to plot produces an overall effect of a pebble dropped into water, echoed in recurrent images of fallings both physical and emotional. (...) She is an extremely readable, easy-flowing writer, and one of the subtlest and most intelligent around. Hotel World is essential reading from a writer confirming herself as a major talent." - Carol Birch, The Independent

Hotel World By Ali Smith | Used | 9780140296792 | World of Books Hotel World By Ali Smith | Used | 9780140296792 | World of Books

Themes of lesbianism (discovery, acceptance of said discovery), death, grieving, time, homogenous societies and class (as illuminated by the setting in a luxurious hotel) are explored. There are six sections in the book covering various time periods and four other women are gradually drawn into the equation and their lives are all examined in detail: Clare, Sara’s sister, who cries a lot and wants to find out how this accident happened; Else, a vagrant really, who lives outside the hotel but gets invited in for the night by the receptionist Lise and Penny, a journalist who’s on the outlook for a scoop. 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) There is unfinished business in Sara's life, too: a watch, for example, she brought to get repaired -- a momentous event in her life, though she did not act as fully on it as she might have. Well once again I encounter that remarkable "wretched stream-of-consciousness" that I'm not really a great lover of (Virginia Woolf immediately springing to mind) but somehow it worked very well here. I must confess that I felt like a voyeur travelling in a somewhat sleepy fashion at times through the book but it is an enthralling work.

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All five seem generally decent people but not averse to committing bad deeds. Penny gives Else a generous cheque and then phones her bank and stops it. Lise lets Else stay in the hotel, strictly against company policy, but then leaves clients on hold and lets one of the chambermaids take the blame for Else’s damage. Else is happy to get what money she can but when Muriel Spark says “remember you must die” (in her 1959 novel Memento Mori) meaning people should appreciate life to its full potential because it will one day end. This quote ties into the theme about the passage of time, and is also reminiscent of Smith's recurrent “remember you must live.” It’s a look that could be very, very deep or very, very barmy but that's how the character Else came across - very deep or completely crazy. Because it was October, I had campaigned for my book club to read something scary, but I was overruled and we ended up with Hotel World as the selection. I didn’t get my first choice, which would have been Frankenstein, although I did get a ghost story, but a sad one, not a scary one. Told, as Ali Smith’s stories often are, by different characters in alternating sections, the language and narrative structure of the book are creative, sometimes experimental, which is also in keeping with what I’ve come to expect from her. This one, however, was not as skillful or readable as the other Smith novels I’ve read.

Hotel World by Ali Smith | Goodreads Hotel World by Ali Smith | Goodreads

There are five characters, two relatives, three strangers, but all female. There is a homeless woman, a hotel receptionist, a hotel critic, the ghost of a hotel chambermaid, and the ghost's sister. These women tell a story, and it is through this story that unbeknownst to them their lives and fates intersect. The catalyst of their story is the Global Hotel. Read, read, read. Read everything—trash, classics, good and bad, and see how they do it. Just like a carpenter who works as an apprentice and studies the most. Read! You’ll absorb it. Then write. If it is good, you’ll find out. If it’s not, throw it out the window.Five people: four are living, three are strangers, two are sisters, one is dead. In her highly acclaimed and ambitious book, the brilliant Scottish writer Ali Smith brings alive five unforgettable characters and traces their intersecting lives. A masterful, exuberant novel from the Booker Prize-shortlisted, Women's Prize-winning author of How to be both and the critically acclaimed Seasonal quartet Q: Hotel World‘s main character is a young ghost named Sara, whose bodily death is vividly reimagined at the start of the novel. How did you get the idea to write this novel from the perspective of a ghost? Have you written about or been interested in ghosts before Hotel World? Dando a cada capítulo uma forma particular que abarca diferentes visões de mundo, a autora mergulha no fluxo de consciência de suas protagonistas, revelando fatos que parecem surgir do próprio ato de narrar. O limite poroso entre o isolamento e a convivência é um tema onipresente que se desdobra em episódios marcantes, como aquele em que o fantasma da camareira desce ao próprio túmulo para ouvir do cadáver suas lembranças de uma vida outrora compartilhada, memórias de um tempo em que eram uma só pessoa. To her considerable credit as a writer, Smith also manages to have her characters approach these grim subjects in moods of humor and unselfconscious bumbling, which makes Hotel World (shortlisted for the 2001 Booker Prize) a greatly appealing read in spite of the heaviness of its themes." - Chris Lehmann, The Washington Post