Where British reviewers see ambition, subtlety and wild imagination, all I can detect are leaden whimsy and mechanistic storytelling. Hotel World turns out to be a thin piece of work." - Michael Upchurch, The New York Times Book Review 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 The heaviness of the prose gave this work the sensation of swimming through metaphors that could not be rushed. One had to come up for air from time to time to continue the breaststroke forward. 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: Ali Smith - Smith, Ali: 9780140296792 - AbeBooks Hotel World: Ali Smith - Smith, Ali: 9780140296792 - AbeBooks

In “True short story” Smith overhears two men, possibly father and son, arguing in a bar about the differences between short stories and novels. Is the novel a “flabby old whore” and the short story a “nimble goddess, a slim nymph”? they ask each other. “They were talking about literature, which happens to be interesting to me, though it wouldn’t interest a lot of people” says Smith in her ironic fashion. She puts the short story dilemma to her friend who is in hospital recovering from an infection after a course of chemotherapy. Her friend is an expert on the short story and this gives Smith the perfect terrain for stating some of her literary opinions. Literary ideas are more fully investigated by Smith in a series of lectures she gave at the University of Oxford in 2012 which were published in a collection entitled Artful where she gives her opinions on four aspects of literature: time, form, edge and offer and reflection using a witty combination of fictional pieces entwined with a series of quotes from a rich and wide range of literary sources.Apart from the fact that all five are women and all five are associated in some way with the hotel, they do have things in common. All five seem to be loners. Penny sits in her hotel watching porn films and bemoaning her past (her parents divorced and she became a kleptomaniac). Clare simply regrets her sister. Lise’s only friend seems to be her mother. Else seems to have no friends, not even fellow homeless people. The dead Sara is rejected even by her own corpse. 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.” Avoiding any semblance of plot, Smith prefers to follow the wild daydreams and complex interior lives of her characters, and to pursue her own playful ideas and imaginings. And, somehow, she pulls it off magnificently." - Jerome Boyd Maunsell, Evening Standard 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.

“Woooo Narrative Empathy and the Deconstruction of Convention

Hotel World is everything a novel should be: disturbing, comforting, funny, challenging, sad, rude, beautiful.-- The Independent (London) Smith uses unique characteristics for each woman giving her novel the feeling of being an observation on society. I really loved the first chapter in which the ghost of a woman called Sara irritably interrogates Sara's earthly remains - an unintentional lovely-bonesey echo); I loved the dizzying leaps of perspective, and I thought the very quirky Notes-to-the-Previous-Chapter beginning on p 103 was very nice, but didn't go far enough. But otherwise, Penny the Copywriter was straight out of all the worst Radio 4 Afternoon Plays (this is a torture reserved for British people) and if the last chapter is a searing exploration of grief, my heart must be made of stone, I couldn't wait for that one to shut up already. 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. 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.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. For the first time this talent, glimpsed and admired in earlier work, has been structured into a world-view; fragmented, tenuous, allusive, sparse -- a provocative view of the world in which we must live and die." - Ruth Scurr, Times Literary Supplement Maid's nostalgic ghost makes a haunting narrator / Novel's life-and-death ambiguities add to its complexity review by Alexandra Yurkovsky for San Francisco Chronicle

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

The second woman is Elspeth, known as Else. She is homeless and has a pitch just outside the hotel. It is not clear why she became homeless but now she scrabbles for small change, envious of the young woman over the road who, because of her age, does much better. She reminisces about her past and about her current life but seems quite happy to be homeless. She remembers when someone from a Sunday paper came and photographed all her possession for an article in the paper. Towards the end of her section, someone comes from the hotel – we will know her as Lise, a receptionist – and offers her a room for the night, as the hotel is fairly empty and it is going to be cold. She accepts and enjoys the room but, inevitably, this has consequences. The plus side is that its probably my favorite book that's even been on the Booker Prize short list. Hotel World is compelling, however, 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. (...) (A) damn good read." - Alexandra Yurkovsky, San Francisco Chronicle Smith is so deft with language that it's easy, at first, to mistake Hotel World for an exercise in style." - Charles Taylor, Salon

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)

Hotel World by Ali Smith | Goodreads

A character in Hotel World talks of manipulating people with stories. She'll tell lies to them about her life, stories designed to evoke sympathy and pity: she is an orphan, she was neglected by her parents, she was sexually abused by a family friend. The stories are tearjerkers, tropes designed to pull the heartstrings. Someone tells you a story like that and, unless you have no heart, you have to say, "Oh my god! How horrible for you!" And then there is that nagging question the dead Sara can't get an answer too: how long did the fatal fall take ? Faulkner's As I Lay Dying: The sections narrated by the different characters don't feel to me an attempt to capture their voices. The sections are not so much spoken by the characters. Instead they seem to be the writer allowing the reader to enter the consciousness of the characters.Q: Hotel World, which was first published in the United Kingdom, garnered much critical acclaim and was shortlisted for the 2000 Orange Prize. Many of the critics, when discussing Hotel World, hypothesize about why you set the novel in a hotel and what it (the hotel setting) symbolizes. Care to answer that yourself? 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. 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