Hotel World: Ali Smith

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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. That this story line was exploded out into five POVs each told in first person narrative—the ghost of the teenage girl, a homeless woman who ends up helping the younger sister, the receptionist at the hotel on the night the younger sister visits, a yuppie journalist staying at the hotel who also ends up helping the younger sister, the younger sister—did not for me make it any more than what it was: at best a superficial examination of the struggle to accept oneself and/or the struggle to cope with a devastating loss. Hotel World is told from the perspective of five different women who as fate would have it cross paths and in doing so affect each other's lives through moments spent together. Each character is unique in that they each signify a different stage of the grieving process, a theme prevalent throughout the entire novel. 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.

Hotel World Summary | SuperSummary Hotel World Summary | SuperSummary

The plot, if you can call it such, is based on five woman, who are either based/visiting the Global Hotel or outside and literally too. While I appreciate Ali Smith's experimentation, I'm not a fan of the quotidian rhythm of her narrators. Whether they are waiting at the airport, or sitting around on their home computer, or flopping on the bed of a sleazy hotel room, I find myself waiting for something interesting to happen far too frequently. Many will find much appeal in Smith's wry and pointed, thought-provoking comments on society, but you can't escape the droll pace and lingering taste of inconsequential dread of the mundane that it leaves in your mouth. At least, that is my feeling after listening to a third audiobook by this author. Curiously, the best audiobook reader I've heard was Ali Smith herself. 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. 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. The book Girl meets Boy (2007) is one of a series entitled The Myths where important world writers have been commissioned by the publishers Canongate to retell a classical myth in a modern manner. Smith chooses to base her contribution on the myth taken from Ovid of Iphis and Ianthe. Iphis is born a girl but brought up by her mother as a boy. She grows up with Ianthe who becomes her best friend and society dictates that they will marry, but what will happen when Ianthe discovers her “husband” is in fact of the same sex as her? Iphis’s mother pleads with the Gods who turn Iphis into a boy and the couple marry and live happily ever after. The intricacies of family relationships – the main characters of the book are two sisters - the blurring of the lines between the sexes – one sister falls in love with a man so sensitive and kind he could be a woman and the other delights in a lesbian relationship - are constant themes in Smith’s work. The book contains some bold observations on homosexuality as one of the sisters realises her sister is gay and is forced to listen to the sexist, homophobic leering of her male friends. Many writers would rail or demonstrate outrage at the malice of the men, but for Smith it is enough for the men’s utterances to be self-condemningly ridiculous.

La novela esta estructurada en partes/ relatos, que corresponden a los personajes, en este caso, cinco personajes femeninos, cada una de ella contara una parte de su historia, que estará conectada de forma directa o indirectamente con el hotel. 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. Now this doesn’t sound very thrilling but persevere because you, the reader, are going to have the time of your life! 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.

Hotel World - Ali Smith - Google Books

This is a short novel with big themes (time, chance, money, death) but an eye for tiny detail: the taste of dust, the weight of a few coins in the hand, the pleasurable pain of a stone in one's shoe . . . Her death affects other women bound up in this rather curious ghost tale. And then each, in turn, relates their personal story. Though she is dead, we follow her ghost. She goes to her own funeral and, subsequently, frequently visits her grave. She even talks to her rotting corpse, which seems to have a separate but functioning existence. In the hands of a lesser writer, this could have been mawkish or even downright silly but Smith carries it off, as we see the ghost gradually forgetting things but remembering key events of her life, such as her first crush (on another woman), trying to recall her death (she can not but her corpse does remember and tells her) and spying on people and even peering into their minds (one man was was considering knives and blood.) She even appears to her family (parents and younger sister) with generally poor results. Ali Smith includes several quotes and short poems at the start of the book which are reflective of the themes of the novel.However, we also see her doing her job, which, at least in part, seems to involve going against the wishes of management (e.g. keeping clients on hold for a long time). 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.” Not everything is successful -- and there are sections that can be quite tiresome -- but parts are exceptional (the first and last sections, in particular). 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 . . ." 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.