Awards
A 2001 Booker Prize finalist
Shortlisted for the 2001 Orange Prize
Synopses & Reviews
Woooooooo-hooooooo.
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.
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.
Review
"Smith is so deft with language that it's easy, at first, to mistake Hotel World for an exercise in style....the type of writing that can give a reader the notion that the book's chief pleasure will be on the level of literary word games. But Smith's is not a surface talent....All the book's living and dead come together in Smith's magnificent coda, a benediction and a release so vivid it can make you feel as if the spirits were rising off the page to fill the air around you. Smith may be a tricky writer, but her summoning powers are no stunt." Charles Taylor, Salon.com (read the entire Salon review)
Review
"Playful, intelligent writing, but with feeling too." Esquire
Review
"Hotel World is everything a novel should be: disturbing, comforting, funny, challenging, sad, rude, beautiful." The Independent (London)
Review
"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)
Review
"To her considerable credit as a writer, Smith manages to have her characters approach these grim subjects in moods of humor and unselfconscious bumbling, which makes Hotel World a greatly appealing read." Chris Lehmann, Washington Post Book World
Review
"A prizewinner back home, Scotland-born Smith offers a verbally high-speed tale of a girl's death that may touch some but will seem mainly airy to others....The pieces do finally come together, yet all remains oddly mechanical....One feels as though Smith were taking as long as possible on as little as possible to make things seem as important as possible....Long riffs on a theme, presented like a puzzle." Kirkus Reviews
Review
"A heartfelt and introspective ghost story, Hotel World begins at the end and works backward and then meanders some in between....[The] characters come together in a tender, moving story of innocence, love, and kindness....Smith's beautiful, unpretentious writing mesmerizes. Highly recommended." Lisa Nussbaum, Library Journal
Review
"Smith expertly fuses humor and pathos throughout the novel....Smith's narrative style varies with each character and is generally exciting and quite successful, although some readers will find the acrobatics tiring. The connections she makes between the characters across class lines and even across the line between life and death are driven home in a beautifully lyrical coda." Publishers Weekly
Review
"Packed full of literary allusions and cunning devices....I have never seen the tenets of recent literary theory so cleverly insinuated into a novel....In the case of Smith and other, mainly American writers (Dave Eggers, Mark (House of Leaves) Danielewski, and Jonathan Lethem), books are being produced that seem specifically designed to be read by a generation brought up on theory." Giles Foden, The Guardian (UK)
Review
"Ali Smith has got style, ideas, and punch. Read her." Jeanette Winterson, author of Written On the Body
Synopsis
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 makes for this playful, defiant, and richly inventive novel.
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.
About the Author
Ali Smith’s first collection of stories won the Saltire First Book Award and a Scottish Arts Council Award. She lives in Cambridge, England.