Hotel World

By Ali Smith

BOOKER PRIZE FINALIST • Forget room service: this is a riotous elegy, a deadpan celebration of colliding worlds, and a spirited defense of love. Blending incisive wit with surprising compassion, Hotel World is a wonderfully invigorating, life-affirming book.

Five people: four are living; three are strangers; two are sisters; one, a teenage hotel chambermaid, has fallen to her death in a dumbwaiter. But her spirit lingers in the world, straining to recall things she never knew. And one night all five women find themselves in the smooth plush environs of the Global Hotel, where the intersection of their very different fates make for this playful, defiant, and richly inventive novel.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
• Release date: Jul 27, 2011
• ISBN: 9780307801975

Ali Smith

Ali Smith was born in Inverness in 1962. She studied at the University of Aberdeen and Newham College, Cambridge. Her first book, Free Love and Other Stories (1995) won the Saltire First Book of the Year award and a Scottish Arts Council Book Award. Her novel Autumn was shortlisted for the 2017 Man Booker. She lives in Cambridge.

Reviews for Hotel World

[jonfaith · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Bought this at the Strand on my heartbreak tour of NYC 2002. I enjoyed the fluid presence, the floating questions of motive, most of which were left unanswered. There is something spectral about these damaged souls. While walking in London eight months later, I found myself glimpsing those souls' reflections.

[patsymurray · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I am passionate about Ali Smith and have so enjoyed her later novels. This book is one of her very first, if not her first. If anything, it is more of a standard narrative than the others, and there is a clear theme that runs through the book that is an important message to convey: that life is for living and that our lives continue to affect others even after we die. I found the endless interior monologues generally tiresome and wasn't as moved as I might have been because there seemed to be only one reaction to sudden death -- shock -- and yet there is so many more ways to experience such an event. Still, if this were my first Ali Smith book, I might be more appreciative of what she has done here. Her other books, The Accidental, How to be Both, and Autumn, are absolute masterpieces so to read this after having read those means my disappointment may be more exaggerated than the book may actually deserve.

[jbd1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Five intertwined narratives, with Smith's trademark wordplay, puzzles, &c. Powerful.

[thorold_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Maybe I was reading this in the wrong conditions, but it didn't grab me quite as much as the other novels by Ali Smith that I've read. There are a lot of good things in it, as you would expect: the opening conceit of the ghost trying to retain a grip on the physical world and having an argument with her own decaying body; the hotel chain as a metaphor for impersonal capitalist society; the homeless woman looking into illuminated windows and seeing snapshots of other people's lives; the tantalising reflections on the arbitrariness of loss and death, and a lot of very clever, witty language. But there also seemed to be long stretches where the prose was just coasting along and didn't quite have that grab-you-by-the-lapels quality that Smith's writing usually has. This is probably one that I will need to re-read before I can really make my mind up about it.

[doryfish-1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I honestly have no idea why I chose to read this book. It was described as "experimental" - simply another word for "pretentious," I thought - and I really do not care for stream of consciousness. Or so I thought, before I found myself swept up into Hotel World.

If the first chapter were a painting, it would be one of those swirly Impressionist things. The narrator is the ghost of Sara Whilby, a teenage chambermaid who died in a bizarre accident. She longs for any sort of sensation, even a stone in a shoe, and finds herself forgetting simple words like "toast." Most memorably, she has a conversation with her decomposing body about her death. While I thought the beginning was perfect, I was gradually less interested in the chapters that followed. The thread connecting the five women is a little too delicate at times, and I was not really gripped again until I read the grief-stricken soliloquy from Clara, Sara's younger sister.

While I liked Hotel World, I know for sure not everybody will. This is the kind of book where the most important event has already occurred, so if you keep reading in the hope that something major will happen, you are going to be disappointed. Ali Smith is also a very playful writer, so if you like, say, punctuation marks, this book will drive you nuts. But I am very happy that I stepped outside my reading comfort zone for once!

[maxernst11 · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

Het lukte me niet om echt voeling te krijgen met het verhaal achter Hotel World: de structuur is wel ingenieus, want geleidelijk wordt duidelijk de 5 vrouwenfiguren die aan het woord komen allemaal met hetzelfde hotel te maken hebben, maar de opeenvolging van verschillende vertelstijlen is zo opzichtig (zie wat ik kan!) dat het verhaal zelf de mist in gaat. Ok, de sociale dimensie (het perspectief van verschillende klassen in de Britse maatschappij) is zeker herkenbaar, maar het raakt me niet. Wellicht zit ik nog teveel in de contemplatieve trance door het lezen van ?Austerlitz? van W.G. Sebald!

[bookomaniac-1 · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

Het lukte me niet om echt voeling te krijgen met het verhaal achter Hotel World: de structuur is wel ingenieus, want geleidelijk wordt duidelijk de 5 vrouwenfiguren die aan het woord komen allemaal met hetzelfde hotel te maken hebben, maar de opeenvolging van verschillende vertelstijlen is zo opzichtig (zie wat ik kan!) dat het verhaal zelf de mist in gaat. Ok, de sociale dimensie (het perspectief van verschillende klassen in de Britse maatschappij) is zeker herkenbaar, maar het raakt me niet. Wellicht zit ik nog teveel in de contemplatieve trance door het lezen van “Austerlitz” van W.G. Sebald!

[pgchuis · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I read this for my OU course and am looking forward to studying it in more detail, because it will definitely bear a second reading. The language is beautiful, and although I found Clare's stream of consciousness difficult to understand at first, I soon got into the rhythm of it.Unusual and thought-provoking, but sad and not an easy read.

[charon07 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Five people who happen to be in the Global Hotel one night, including the ghost of a hotel maid who's plunged to her death in "the, the. The lift for dishes, very small room waiting suspended above a shaft of nothing, I forget the word, it has its own name." It's playful with language, funny, tragic, all about love and life and death, and so compassionate toward ordinary, everyday people without ever becoming sentimental.

"Remember you must live.
Remember you most love.
Remainder you mist leaf."

[carmenmilligan · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

This book was a refreshing change of pace from the others I've read recently. The writing style is fragmented, challenging, stream-of-conscienceness, moment-in-time, random, specific... Words and words and words, sometimes making sentences, sometimes pages with no punctuation. I loved the view points, the differences in their dialogue with me, the reader, and their perspective. This was a very different and satisfying book.

[pussreboots · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Hotel World started out strong and then petered out. By the time I had gotten to the long run-on sentence chapter done by Clair I had lost interest in the book.

[atsa-8 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Love the unconventional writing style from the point of view of a ghost figuring out how she died in a curious and funny way. Loved that she was in love with the girl at the watch counter instead of with a boy.

[williecostello · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Hotel World is a fairly accessible non-traditional novel, deploying various techniques of modernist fiction without ever completely overwhelming the reader or collapsing into empty formalism. Its six distinct parts, with their six distinct literary voices, each offer a distinct take on the phenomenology of memory and experience. More than introducing us to their different protagonists, or to their different perspectives on the same situation, each part introduces us to a different way in which we engage with and make sense of the world around us.However, I was never really gripped by the novel's actual story, and this lack of emotional connection ultimately kept the book from being something greater for me. I really like what Smith was up to in this novel -- I just wasn't ever all that swept away by how she did it.

[pam8enser · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

I had such high hopes for this book. I even bought it.


The story and construction of this book had so much potential. But I barely read the last 30 pages of the book because of the lack of punctuation. I hate stream of consciousness. I hate anything that resembles it. Which is why I refuse to read Virginia Woolf. And the content of those last 30 pages didn't grab me as they should have.

Those stinkin award winners have just been disappointing lately. I think these books just say they get awards just to sell more books, not because they're any good.

[sunfi_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Finished this one, it was a little tough for me to read especially those sections without any punctuation. I can't say I would really recommend it to someone who prefers a more traditional literary format.

[melydia_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

This book is distilled insanity. It's told from the more or less stream-of-consciousness points of view of five women whose lives intersect in a certain hotel: a dead teenager trying to remember her past, her sister working through her grief, a self-absorbed journalist, a bed-ridden invalid, and a barely coherent homeless woman. I wish I could explain the plot, but there really isn't one - just snapshots of life that happen to overlap a bit. That said, it was kind of a fun read in places. The ghost's manic descriptions were fun, the journalist's ignorance was amusing, and some of the writing style was novel. Plus, it was short enough that I never felt overtaxed by any one character - save the sister, whose entire chapter contained no punctuation. That was exhausting to read.

[rhinoa_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Hotel World tells the story of a young woman who starts working at a hotel chain and dies. She climbs into a dumb waiter, but it is old and snaps and she falls down the shaft being killed on impact. There was one witness, a boy who she worked with and got along well with. The girl had recently fallen in love for the first time and was shocked to find it was with another girl. The tale is split into sections told by different people with connections to the hotel and the dead girl. The first narrator is the ghost of the girl herself. I loved the way she is portrayed as not really remembering who she was and being able to appear to her family. The second character is Else, a homeless lady who asks for change outside the hotel. She is offered a free night in the hotel by a receptionist (the third narrator). The fourth character is a guest at the hotel, a journalist who reviews the hotel. The next story is that of the dead girls sister and how it has affected her. The final story is the girl in the watch shop who had been the object of the dead girls love.I loved this short novel. It read like a series of short stories that were interconnected. Somehow Ali is able to change her writing style so it really does feel like you are reading the thoughts of different people. I also warmed to all the characters, even the journalist and loved how little comments from one persons story had an affect on another characters.

[kyuuketsukirui · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Like The Accidental, this is rather...experimental. There were some parts I liked less than others because of that, but I do love her prose and really enjoyed the story.The section that I found difficult to read was the sister's. I get what she was trying to do and it did work really well in getting her (Claire? was that her name?) state of mind across, but it was hard to read for such a long period. I kept losing my place because there was nothing, no periods or anything to ground me. Also the ampersands grated and I didn't see a reason for those at all.I loved that in the end it came back to the watch shop girl. I loved that she was crushing on Sara, too, and aww, keeping the watch and never knowing she was dead and hoping she'd come back and all awkwardly flirty and and and! Perfect ending.

[nativeroses_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Ali Smith delves into the psyches of a teenage ghost, homeless woman, young front desk worker, and guests connected to a hotel. The prose is disturbing and also very funny, sometimes at the same time. Jim Crace blurbed the book: "Courageous and startling. I doubt that I shall read a tougher or more affecting novel this year." i'd agree if i hadn't just read Jhumpa Lahiri's Unaccustomed Earth, but Hotel World is still wonderful and i recommend it highly.

[cariola_6 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Disappointing collection of loosely related stories. I enjoyed Smith's The Accidental and have been working my way through her other books--but so far, none of them has come close to her Booker-nominated novel. I appreciate her experimentation here: the five female narrators each speaks in a very different voice, reflected by very different styles. But the women (except for two sisters) are tenuously connected, and the technique reads like practice for what worked so well in The Accidental.

[hippielunatic · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I was pulled in by the different styles of voice, but I was left a bit unsatisfied by not having a moment of clarity at the end of the book.

[melibrarian_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

+ Well-written, interesting voices & prose.- Sometimes the artsy prose was too much, I wish there was a "wow" moment when you find out everybody is connected (instead, the knowledge trickles out throughout the book.)

[niecierpek · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

A day in the lives of five women, one of whom is a ghost. They are connected in some way to the same hotel-“Hotel World”- and to each other. All characters are profoundly unhappy and to some degree dysfunctional. They also, to different degrees, have a problem expressing themselves. Their character sketches and their, for each one distinct and different, stream of consciousness narrations are brilliant and make for good reading. The problem I had with the book was its title. I just don’t think it is accurate to call the lives of these women “hotel world”. Not everybody under the sun is female and depressed and dysfunctional (well, maybe to some degree) It was also a very gay book in a way that is difficult to explain. It just felt like The Hours by Cunningham, which was also very palpably gay. Otherwise, very good in many ways, including the interweaving of lives, style and especially in the portrayal of a homeless woman: Elspeth.