How long does it take to say that stereotypical belief that men don't communicate and women will do anything to keep them. Apparently 241 pages.

Ugghhh!

OMG what a bunch of drama queens. Everybody here takes him/herself w a y too seriously. Is anybody on earth really this humorless? A story--told stupidly in the present tense, self consciously drifting from a boring, dreary present to a misunderstood past--about a divorcing couple who deserve each shallow, self absorbed other.

Familiar story told in a different way. It's actually hard to believe that someone can go through 20 years of marriage without once saying "I love you", but what do I know. I liked the book overall. Very quick read once you get into it.

I found a "Small Hotel" to be a very realistic and heartbreaking portrayal of a couple's life leading up to the dissolution of their marriage. The novel tells the story of their marriage through flashbacks that span the years and bring us back to the present time on the day their divorce is supposed to be final. Although the demise of a marriage is sad,I found Michael's inability to to say the words I love you to his wife or daughter to be the saddest reality of the situation. I sympathize with

Confused by LoveIn one evening a couple relives their entire life together. As young people they met in Louisiana at Mardi Gras and immediately felt an affinity. Over the next 25 years life happens and cracks begin to open. Work, parenting and their scars from childhood intervene. Michael’s harsh, unexpressive father taught him not to share what’s in his heart. It’s not manly. Kelly can’t help wondering why her mentally ill father is so distant. Then they both meet other people who seduce them a...

I'm not sure why this book was so highly recommended. It was a complete bore. The author's writing style was a distraction (ex. And...and...and...and...etc.). The ending was all Hollywood. Meh.

I have previously read "Perfume River" by Robert Olen Butler and loved that one. "A Small Hotel" was good as well, but not on the same level, in my opinion. There is no doubt that this novel is written in a fascinating way. It's basically one long chapter about Michael's and Kelly's thoughts on their mariage which has failed after 20 years. They are now separated and thinking back on their happy days as a couple. Kelly has even returned to room 303 at a hotel where they had their first date. How...

Superior writing, Great local details. But...In Short: Robert O. Butler can be depended upon to write compelling well crafted prose. His command of the geography of his story is complete. To believe this particular story you have to believe that people will not talk to each other.A married couple, who love each other are in the last stages of divorce. The reason for the divorce is that he does not know when she needs him to say what. She will not tell him when she needs him to say what. If she h...

Author: Robert Olen Butler Title: A Small HotelDescription (source): Pulitzer Prize winner Robert Olen Butler has written fiction about far-ranging topics including hell, extraterrestrials, and the Vietnam War. With A Small Hotel, his twelfth novel, he has turned his attention to a new topic—the complexities of a male-female relationship—and delivers a beautifully told story of love, loss, and redemption.Set in contemporary New Orleans but working its way back in time, A Small Hotel chronicles t...

I found this book unbearable. It's written in a way I might have been tempted to write a short story in the ninth grade, thinking it romantic to use pronouns almost exclusively. Of course I wouldn't have used the word "tits" quite so much, or at all really. Give it a read if you like to roll your eyes. Bonus points if you suffer through the audiobook: it really got on my nerves that this was read by the author. Thank God it's over.

I absolutely hated this book. One of my random downloads (WHY, LORD?) and I don't know what compelled me to do that. It's only 128 pages long. 128 effing pages!!!! I barely got thru the first five pages. Why, at my age, I feel I must finish what I start is a mystery. I'm not sure I learned my lesson sticking with this one to the final page. I even disciplined myself to ONLY read this while I was in the hospital for a lengthy stay. I thought that would give me the incentive to swiftly finish it.

See it in the catalog here: http://haines.evergreencatalog.com/op...November 2011This is a quiet, thoughtful novel set in present-day New Orleans. Robert Olen Butler, an eloquent writer, pulls off a difficult story-line in a way that only a seasoned writer like himself could. Michael and Kelly Hays are divorcing, and the novel works its way back in time to understand how two human beings came to be married and what, over time, made them fall apart. I loved the way Butler doesn't pick sides: he l...

This is why I try to avoid reading other reviews of books before I write my own thoughts. According to a major newspaper's book blog, Butler's latest novel comes uncomfortably close to mirroring his own 1995 divorce, made infamous after an extremely personal email he wrote went astray. An email about why his marriage failed, citing specifics about his ex-wife's past.I'll be honest, knowing Butler was at least inadvertently responsible for this happening pre-disposes me to feel a little disgusted...

Being speechless after reading a book certainly makes it hard to write a coherent review but I’m going to do my best. While this book deals with a married couple, I think everyone who has come to the ending of a failed relationship can relate to this story: the melancholy, the outsider interference, the fog that envelopes you and keeps you physically moving forward in the world while remaining emotional adrift. When first starting the book, I was worried about the “flashbacks” that were mentione...

Though many describe this book as the story of the dissolution of a marriage, I saw it as a masterful portrayal of people caught in their own limitations, which are also the limitations of their parents and will be the limitations of their children if they don't CUT IT OUT!!! Some are critical of the author's choice of writing about this topic (marital reconfiguring) on the heels of his own, fairly recent (2007) divorce. I am of the "write-about-what-you-know" school of thought. Especially if yo...

http://www.dallasnews.com/entertainme...The author, known for his risk-taking, offers a quiet but well-executed story about a disintigrating marriage FICTIONA Small HotelRobert Olen Butler(Grove, $24)Some of literature's greatest plots would have been ruined by modern technology. Take Romeo and Juliet — if those lovesick teenagers had been able to text each other, there would have been no mix-ups over who was dead and who wasn't. And what if Jane Eyre could have gone online to learn that Mr. Roc...

This is the story of Michael and Kelly Hays. It tells us of how they met, married, lived and fell apart. Michael is a lawyer and an emotionally distant man. He has been raised to believe that simply by "being there" he has expressed his emotions. This is learned behavior from his emotionally distant father. His father also teaches him that saying "I love you" is nothing more than words.Kelly is a woman who deeply feels and needs to hear the words from her husband but never pushes him to say thos...

How in heaven's name can a creative writing teacher at Florida State University, who has won a Pulitzer Prize, National Magazine Awards, a Guggenheim Fellowship for fiction, an NEA grant and the Richard and Hinda Roenthal Award, possibly write such a terrible book? Run on sentences, fragmented paragraphs and formless, shapeless writing abounds. If you're all about reading a book where almost every other sentence begins with 'and' or 'but,' this book is for you. This is a dark and depressing litt...

A wonderfully written short novel about a romantic triangle that becomes, as the New York Times put it, "an interrogation of the limitations and uses of language." The principals are just three in number: Michael, a Pensacola lawyer who believes that loving someone means never having to say "I love you"; his wife Kelly, who instead of signing their divorce papers has driven to New Orleans with plans to commit suicide in the hotel where they first made love; and Michael's new girlfriend Laurie, w...