Hotel World: Ali Smith

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Nineteen year old Sara Wilby has just started work at the Global Hotel as a chambermaid and dies in a rather unfortunate way there. Her dead teenage narrator is “floating around” and slowly losing her earthly ties. She is forgetting vocabulary and wants to find out how she fell before it is all too late. She knows this “thing” fell to the ground and killed her and as a result she attempts to have conversations with Sara down in the grave. Q: Hotel World‘s main character is a young ghost named Sara, whose bodily death is vividly reimagined at the start of the novel. How did you get the idea to write this novel from the perspective of a ghost? Have you written about or been interested in ghosts before Hotel World? Though not all the voices are as mesmeric as Sara's, each is enriched and enforced by the author's ability to find life where there is death and language where there is silence." - Melissa Katsoulis, The Times 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 This book was nominated for both the Man Booker Prize (then simply the Booker Prize) and what was then called the Orange Women’s Prize for Fiction. It won neither but clearly showed that Ali Smith was a first-class novelist who was going to have a successful career as a novelist. I found this novel very thought-provoking, superbly well-written and clearly the work of a top writer. Publishing history

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

Clare Wilby – the younger sister to Sara, Clare is not entirely introduced until the last section of the novel. Clare's character signifies the final stage in the grieving process, that of acceptance.

This is a short novel with big themes (time, chance, money, death) but an eye for tiny detail: the taste of dust, the weight of a few coins in the hand, the pleasurable pain of a stone in one's shoe . . . Smith is so deft with language that it's easy, at first, to mistake Hotel World for an exercise in style." - Charles Taylor, Salon The best parts of this book was the brooding on the topic of death and the unique perspectives. They added some variety, but you will never find a conventional thrill in one of her books. More likely, you will stumble through with the sensibility you have during those dreams, where you're in a public place, nothing is happening, but you are suddenly overcome with incomprehensible anxiety, or you're suddenly naked and dead - one or the other. Obviously, Ali Smith has garnered popularity and success through her slanted view of modern people and their foibles. 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's sidelong approach to plot produces an overall effect of a pebble dropped into water, echoed in recurrent images of fallings both physical and emotional. (...) She is an extremely readable, easy-flowing writer, and one of the subtlest and most intelligent around. Hotel World is essential reading from a writer confirming herself as a major talent." - Carol Birch, The Independent

Hotel World (Smith) - LitLovers Hotel World (Smith) - LitLovers

A masterful, exuberant novel from the Booker Prize-shortlisted, Women's Prize-winning author of How to be both and the critically acclaimed Seasonal quartetThough it never comes to fruition in the novel, Sara Wilby's sexual awakening when she meets the girl in the watch shop—and the girl's shared interest in Sara, which is only conveyed briefly near the end of the novel—reveal a very internal coming out process for both women as each recognizes in herself her potential as a sexual being attracted to the same sex. Sara Wilby's early reluctant awareness of her attraction, and her subsequent somewhat obsessive observing of the watch shop girl, echo the recurring theme of watching and observing in the novel, and simultaneously convey the hope and complexity associated with recognizing one's queer self. There is unfinished business in Sara's life, too: a watch, for example, she brought to get repaired -- a momentous event in her life, though she did not act as fully on it as she might have. 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)

Ali Smith’s Numismatic Modernism About Change: Ali Smith’s Numismatic Modernism

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) Acclaimed as a truly inventive novel, Hotel World received much praise for its unique storyline and distinct formal choices. Garnered as a rare novel filled with hope and despair, Hotel World’s characters, linguistic choices, and thematic elements are what have set it apart as a genuinely modernist -- and some would argue postmodern -- piece of literature.In six sections, temporally titled (from "Past" through "Future Conditional" to "Present"), the overlapping stories of five characters are told.