Hotel World

Smith's dark, but ultimately joyful humour makes Hotel World a celebration, sometimes gentle, sometimes riotous, rather than melancholic wallowing in the human condition. The novel opens with the most banal of tragedies, shockingly and exuberantly narrated in the first person by its victim, Sara. Her gradually dissolving ties to the material world are evoked through her diminishing grasp on the language. The other interlinked vignettes in this novel also revolve around the Global Hotel, scene of the tragedy, and the traces of this fatal accident leaves behind. The other worldly dimensions of the novel are treated with a light touch but still impart a message about what is important in this life. Smith's prose plays with tenses and narrative forms to give her reader access to the personal histories, interior lives and distinctive voices of a group of very different women: Else, the homeless woman who begs opposite the hotel; Lise, the hotel receptionist who offers her a bed for the night; Penny, the self-involved wannabe journalist/copywriter churning out trite cliches; and Clare, the bereaved sister of Sara. Duncan, the shell-shocked witness to Sara's swift and untimely demise has a walk-on part in several of the women's stories. Time plays a central role in Hotel World. From Sara's nascent desire for the girl who works in the watch shop, through the narrative organization, to the preoccupation with speed and duration shared by Sara, champion swimmer and the sister she leaves behind. The other key theme is the bonds of love - however stretched and tentative - which link the novels protagonists to each other and to the world. The ambivalence of these bonds is strikingly communicated across the whole spectrum of nuance through the differing perspectives of the five women. Although there is real pathos and pain in the linked narratives, there is also a palpable sense of the potential for mourning to achieve some resolution and for emotional healing to take place. (Kirkus UK)