Another astonishing piece of work from Ms. Smith. Is there anything this writer can’t do? I have domestic duties and a rumbling stomach at present, so this review might be brief, and gushing. But here goes.I love Ali Smith. I love Ali Smith because she moves me, and being a man, I’m not supposed to be moved by books. I’m supposed to be stirred by the raging masculinity of men in battle: the sound of gunfire in the crisp Vienna air as heads rain down upon the blood-soaked streets. But no. This pi...

This is the fourth book by Ali Smith I’ve read - which is interesting because if there’s a number Smith likes, it’s the number four - her books are sometimes divided into four sections and a couple have titles containing four words - How to Be Both, There But for the.This book has four female characters, Else, Lisa, Penny and Claire. Each character has her own section which is written as an interior monologue. Each section is connected directly or indirectly to the hotel where a fifth character

The fall occurs at dawn. Albert CamusIf I had not read MJ’s excellent review (https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...), I would never have purchased this book as firstly, I had never heard of the author and secondly, this didn’t sound like my type of book at all. That’s the “problem” with Goodreads; there is too much choice and I seem to be continuously stumbling across new authors. All one can possibly do in my case is to compare my purchase with a rather prized sweet in the sweet shop and

While I appreciate Ali Smith's experimentation, I'm not a fan of the quotidian rhythm of her narrators. Whether they are waiting at the airport, or sitting around on their home computer, or flopping on the bed of a sleazy hotel room, I find myself waiting for something interesting to happen far too frequently. Many will find much appeal in Smith's wry and pointed, thought-provoking comments on society, but you can't escape the droll pace and lingering taste of inconsequential dread of the mundan...

Hotel World was quite the experience. Ali Smith certainly has talent asking with her unique writing style and a recognizable author's voice. The synopsis for it actually gives great insight into the core of this novel: "Five disparate voices inhabit Ali Smith's dreamlike, mesmerising Hotel World, set in the luxurious anonymity of the Global Hotel, in an unnamed northern English city. The disembodied yet interconnected characters include Sara, a 19-year-old chambermaid who has recently died at th...

2.5 stars Because it was October, I had campaigned for my book club to read something scary, but I was overruled and we ended up with Hotel World as the selection. I didn’t get my first choice, which would have been Frankenstein, although I did get a ghost story, but a sad one, not a scary one. Told, as Ali Smith’s stories often are, by different characters in alternating sections, the language and narrative structure of the book are creative, sometimes experimental, which is also in keeping wit...

A good, but nowhere near as good as her others, novel from one of my favourite authors Ali Smith. This is probably her most depressing novel, I mean, one of the narrators is literally a dead person. All the action takes place around a hotel, The Global Hotel. Even from the name of the hotel you can tell that this novel is full of metaphor for the human condition. Usually I like that sort of this but this one didn't do it for me. I'm kinda disappointed but I can't be mad at Ali. She's a brilliant...

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.

Only my second from Ali Smith. And the one that convinced me. Believe the HYPE folks.

I didn't manage to really connect with the story behind Hotel World: the structure of the novel is ingenious, because it gradually becomes clear that the 5 women that are speaking to us all have a link with the same hotel, but the sequence of different writing styles is so ostentatious (see what I can!) that the story itself remains in the fog. OK, the social dimension (the perspective of different social classes in British society) is certainly recognizable, but it didn't "hit" me. Probably I'm...

I never thought I'd say this but... I think Ali Smith's overtaken Murakami as my favourite author. Reading a book that makes you want to cry, curl up in a little ball and fills you with the most melancholy and bittersweet of happinesses is why I read in the first place. I don't know what to do with myself. No one I've read yet has had such a powerful voice and view of the human experience. Every word she writes has a purpose and a necessity. My favourite Ali Smith yet.

4.5 stars."hooooo and this time I’d count as I went, one elephant two eleph-ahh) if I could feel it again, how I hit it, the basement, from four floors up, from toe to head, dead. Dead leg. Dead arm. Dead hand. Dead eye. Dead I, four floors between me and the world, that’s all it took to take me, that’s the measure of it, the length and death of it, the short goodb—."hooooo and broke on the ground, I broke too. The ceiling came down, the floor came up to meet me. My back broke, my neck broke, my...

Three books in and it’s official: I’m in love with Ali Smith. If you’d told me two years ago that I would love books written in a stream of consciousness style I’d have laughed in your face. I didn’t think it would work for me, and I can totally see why it doesn’t work for some others, but oh my, work it does!!.When I’m reading a book by Ali Smith I feel like a little bumblebee, the pages are my nectar and I’m bumbling from page to page, getting a wee bit intoxicated on all that sweet pollen-y g...

Death by Dumbwaiter........."Woo-hooooooo" Sara Wilby's tragic death, spiralling down in a dumbwaiter, begins with the voice of Sara's 'gossamer ghost'. We see her desperate to understand what just happened. Her death affects other women bound up in this rather curious ghost tale. And then each, in turn, relates their personal story. Hotel World is a story of the power of time, how quickly time can turn us from living to dead, sane to mad, happy to sad, secure to homeless, rich to poor, healthy