'Hotel World' offers readers poetic story of five women
By Tiara Jewell
Posted: 3/27/02, 2:02 AM EST Section: Feature
"Hotel World"
By Ali Smith
236 pages
Anchor Books
$9.60
"Hotel World" tells the story of five women whose lives cross paths one not-so-fateful evening. Each character is carefully contrived and the language is poetic. In just over 200 pages, Scottish author Ali Smith ponders and recreates the moments and encounters in life we usually let pass us by.
The lives of these five women don't seem special: the restless ghost aching to figure out the details behind her death, an ill hotel worker trying to make it to the end of her shift, a beggar calculating her day's earnings, a young writer mulling over her next article, and a grieving sister communicating with her dead sibling. You'd never acknowledge or think twice of them in passing, yet Smith's artfulness gives each one meaning.
Smith uses a different style and separate way of speaking for each of the women, mixing first and third person perspectives, spellings and meanings of words.
Smith's prose has a poetic ring, each story told in a different manner. When one woman talks to her deceased sister, her ramblings are quick and unpunctuated, except for several ampersands: "& since there was that day when you pulled my hair really hard & since you got into real trouble when mum brushed my hair & it all came out in a big lump on the brush & since it hasn't ever grown back properly there since then & since you could swear better than anybody & since you covered my arm in bruises after I told about you swearing."
The dead sister speaks with ghostly language: "I will miss my fall that made me wooo-hoooo I am today."
"Hotel World" relishes life's many encounters. Unlike writers who are concerned with stretching stories over long periods of time, Smith focuses on the milliseconds of life - the brief moments that make an impact.
"The clock on the computer reads 6:51 p.m., but at the very moment she glances at it the black 1 changes to a 2. 6:52 p.m. She is pleased to have seen it happen. It feels meant."
"Hotel World" is a good, quick read. Like the movie "Four Rooms," it peeks into the worlds of five distinct women and proves that each life has a meaning.
By Ali Smith
236 pages
Anchor Books
$9.60
"Hotel World" tells the story of five women whose lives cross paths one not-so-fateful evening. Each character is carefully contrived and the language is poetic. In just over 200 pages, Scottish author Ali Smith ponders and recreates the moments and encounters in life we usually let pass us by.
The lives of these five women don't seem special: the restless ghost aching to figure out the details behind her death, an ill hotel worker trying to make it to the end of her shift, a beggar calculating her day's earnings, a young writer mulling over her next article, and a grieving sister communicating with her dead sibling. You'd never acknowledge or think twice of them in passing, yet Smith's artfulness gives each one meaning.
Smith uses a different style and separate way of speaking for each of the women, mixing first and third person perspectives, spellings and meanings of words.
Smith's prose has a poetic ring, each story told in a different manner. When one woman talks to her deceased sister, her ramblings are quick and unpunctuated, except for several ampersands: "& since there was that day when you pulled my hair really hard & since you got into real trouble when mum brushed my hair & it all came out in a big lump on the brush & since it hasn't ever grown back properly there since then & since you could swear better than anybody & since you covered my arm in bruises after I told about you swearing."
The dead sister speaks with ghostly language: "I will miss my fall that made me wooo-hoooo I am today."
"Hotel World" relishes life's many encounters. Unlike writers who are concerned with stretching stories over long periods of time, Smith focuses on the milliseconds of life - the brief moments that make an impact.
"The clock on the computer reads 6:51 p.m., but at the very moment she glances at it the black 1 changes to a 2. 6:52 p.m. She is pleased to have seen it happen. It feels meant."
"Hotel World" is a good, quick read. Like the movie "Four Rooms," it peeks into the worlds of five distinct women and proves that each life has a meaning.
