Hotel World: Ali Smith

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Despite the pop vibrance of the cover, this is a book about death. Not simply death as tragedy, or the 'end.' It flits through the liminal space between death and life, death and love, fate and will. It is about those who live like death is a myth, like suffering is an unknowable. It is about those times when we pass by death like ships in the night. It is about the detritus and surviving of death. The fifth section of the novel titled “Future in the Past,” is entirely Clare's memories on the life and death of her sister Sara. There is a fair amount of experimentation in Hotel World, as Smith uses a number of styles and approaches. Smith is so deft with language that it's easy, at first, to mistake Hotel World for an exercise in style." - Charles Taylor, Salon Hotel World is everything a novel should be: disturbing, comforting, funny, challenging, sad, rude, beautiful. The Independent (London)

“Woooo Narrative Empathy and the Deconstruction of Convention

Smith uses unique characteristics for each woman giving her novel the feeling of being an observation on society. Say a body. Where none. No mind. Where none. That at least. A place. Where none. For the body. To be in."Just then, Penny and the girl get the boards free from the wall, revealing the dumbwaiter shaft behind it. The girl tosses a few random items down the shaft, then starts crying. Else decides to keep half the coins and leave the girl the other half. Else and Penny exit the hotel together and walk around town.

Hotel World Summary | SuperSummary Hotel World Summary | SuperSummary

And then there is that nagging question the dead Sara can't get an answer too: how long did the fatal fall take ? Diria que es una novela... diferente, quizá por la manera de escribir de la autora o simplemente por la trama. The final person we meet is Clare, Sara’s younger sister. It is only from her that we learn that Sara was a swimming champion. Clare is, perhaps not surprisingly, obsessed with her sister. Indeed, as she says, she continues to see her or, at least, sense her: every night ever since then since that night it has been the bits of her coming at me like they are all demanding I never know what. I’ve always loved the quote below by William Faulkner and it sprang to mind when I began to re-read this book.

Quello che più mi piace di Ali Smith è come scrive. Sempre. Le storie sono raccontate in modo originali, con delle strutture narrative estreme.

ALI HOMING THE UNHOMELY: TESS S COSMOPOLITAN AFTERLIFE IN ALI

Her death affects other women bound up in this rather curious ghost tale. And then each, in turn, relates their personal story. Three books in and it’s official: I’m in love with Ali Smith. If you’d told me two years ago that I would love books written in a stream of consciousness style I’d have laughed in your face. I didn’t think it would work for me, and I can totally see why it doesn’t work for some others, but oh my, work it does!! hooooooo what a fall what a soar what a plummet what a dash into dark into light what a plunge what a glide thud crash what a drop what a rush what a swoop what a fright what a mad hushed skirl what a smash mush mash-up broken and gashed what a heart in my mouth what an end. This is the fourth book by Ali Smith I’ve read - which is interesting because if there’s a number Smith likes, it’s the number four - her books are sometimes divided into four sections and a couple have titles containing four words - How to Be Both, There But for the. Split into six sections marked by a separate tense, Hotel World uses a corporate hotel and the accidental death of Sara Wilby as a pull for its five characters, establishing a style and structure used in her later novels The Accidental and There but for the. Each section varies in rhythm, style and narrative position, opening with Sara’s ghost conversing with her corpse to get the scoop on her death. Crouching in a dumbwaiter (a lift shaft for tea trolleys), Sara plummeted to a horrible death aged twenty.None of the five seems to be happy, complaining about their lot but accepting it, presumably because, given where they live, there are few options. What romantic relations they have are not happy ones. Sara has a crush on the woman at the watch repair shop but does not pursue it. Penny has sex with a friend of her father as way of revenge when he is unfaithful to her mother. Sara, aged fourteen, has sex with the man doing the tiles when her mother is upstairs having a shower. A 20 year old girl dies when she plunges to the bottom of an elevator shaft while playing around in a hotel dumbwaiter. That doesn't sound like a premise for an exceptional novel, but in Ali Smith's hands that's exactly what it becomes. There are five viewpoints here, including that of Sara herself, as she recalls her death and the days immediately before and after. Her younger sister gets a say, as does the desk receptionist at the hotel, and a homeless woman and a young female reporter. The latter two women never knew her at all.

Ali Smith: Hotel World | The Modern Novel Ali Smith: Hotel World | The Modern Novel

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, 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.

Though it never comes to fruition in the novel, Sara Wilby's sexual awakening when she meets the girl in the watch shop—and the girl's shared interest in Sara, which is only conveyed briefly near the end of the novel—reveal a very internal coming out process for both women as each recognizes in herself her potential as a sexual being attracted to the same sex. Sara Wilby's early reluctant awareness of her attraction, and her subsequent somewhat obsessive observing of the watch shop girl, echo the recurring theme of watching and observing in the novel, and simultaneously convey the hope and complexity associated with recognizing one's queer self.