A Small Hotel
New York, N.Y. Grove Press, 2011. First Printing [Stated]. Trade paperback. Format is approximately 5 inches by 7.25 inches. [16], 241, [15] pages. Autographed copy sticker on front cover. Signed by the author on the title page. Sticker residue on back cover. A Small Hotel is a beautifully told story of love, loss, and redemption. Set in New Orleans, the novel chronicles the relationship between Michael and Kelly Hays, who have decided to separate after twenty years of marriage. On the day that the divorce is to be finalized, Kelly drives from her home in Pensacola, Florida, across the panhandle to New Orleans, and checks into room 303 at the Olivier House in the city's French Quarter--the hotel where she and Michael fell in love two decades earlier and where she now finds herself about to make a decision that will forever affect her, Michael, and their nineteen-year-old daughter, Samantha. An intelligent, deeply moving, and remarkably written portrait of a relationship that reads as a cross between a romance novel and a literary page-turner. Robert Olen Butler (born January 20, 1945) is an American fiction writer. His short-story collection A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 1993. Robert Olen Butler is the author of 12 novels and six short story collections. The author's first novel was The Alleys of Eden, which was published in 1981 by Horizon Press after being rejected by 21 publishers. 2013 received the Fitzgerald Award for Achievement in American Literature award which is given annually in Rockville Maryland, the city where Fitzgerald, his wife, and his daughter are buried as part of the F. Scott Fitzgerald Literary Festival. Derived from a Kirkus review: A painful marital breakup stimulates a flow of harsh memories leading toward a decisive climactic choice, in NBA-winner Butler’s emotionally charged novel. Though its title alludes to a Broadway show tune about the joys of honeymooning, the subject is the impending divorce of Kelly and Michael Hays, left unaccomplished when she fails to show up in a Louisiana courthouse to sign final papers. Thereafter, we observe the pair in present circumstances and both shared and separate memories, as Michael second-guesses his own rapidly escalating affair with a beautiful younger woman and Kelly reconsiders experiences that have eroded her enchantment with Michael’s confident masculinity and gracefully borne sense of honor and responsibility. The book waxes and wane , whether in the memory of a drunken Mardi Gras episode (from which he rescued her); Michael’s “clever” marriage proposal; Michael’s borderline-bathetic recall of having disappointed his tyrannical dad; and Kelly’s far more plaintive memories of inevitable alienation from her withdrawn, unresponsive father. On balance, this is a fairly short book that feels like a rather longer one, perhaps because we learn about its principal characters’ inner lives. And minor characters like Michael’s new lover Laurie and the Hays’ adult daughter Sam register on the page. Derived from Publishers Weekly: This drama from Pulitzer-winner Butler tells the story of a failed marriage through flashbacks on the day the couple is to be divorced. Reserved tough-guy Michael Hays is hoping to bed his much younger girlfriend while his soon-to-be-ex, Kelly, skips out on filing the divorce papers to ponder suicide in the same hotel room where they fell in love 20 years ago. Flashbacks Michael and Kelly ample opportunity to ponder their history for the reader's edification, showing Michael to be a boorish void and Kelly a needy woman desperate for one romantic declaration. With surprises and psychology, this tale is easily digestible. Condition: Very good.
Keywords: Michael Hays, Kelly Hays, Marriage, Divorce, Relationships, Daughter, Samantha Hays, New Orleans, French Quarter, Olivier House, Pensacola, Room 303, Suicide
ISBN: 9780802145833
[Book #82426]
Price: $75.00