What do you think?
Rate this book
Splendid Hôtel
Vingt-trois chants où le "je" d'une femme sans nom, sans âge, sans visage, dit la Passion du Splendid Hôtel, son trésor, sa chose, légué par grand-mère qui l'a fait construire au bord du marais virulent. Splendid Hôtel déjà délabré, attaqué, miné, et qui ne cessera d'endurer tous les fléaux, de souffrir de tous les maux, dont le pire : la tendance fatale de ses sanitaires à se boucher, la narratrice toujours occupée à les déboucher. Laborieuse, infatigable narratrice, toute consacrée aux soins du Splendid Hôtel, dévouée aux malheureux clients - les anonymes, attirés par les enseignes clignotantes, et les professionnels du chemin de fer venus imposer au marais leur grand oeuvre -, harcelée qu'elle est pendant ce temps par ses deux surs parasites, Ada la malade et Adel la comédienne ratée, l'une et l'autre semant sans cesse le trouble et la zizanie.
128 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1986
12 people are currently reading
1592 people want to read
About the author
Marie Redonnet
28 books34 followersBorn in Paris in 1947, Redonnet taught for a number of years in a suburban lycée before deciding to pursue a writing career full time. Since her volume of poetry Le Mort & Cie appeared in 1985, she has published four novels, a novella, numerous short stories, and three dramatic works.
Redonnet's novels have been compared to those of Annie Ernaux, Alain Robbe-Grillet, and Samuel Beckett. She has since acknowledged the crucial influence which Beckett's work has had upon her literary work. And yet she is also notably different from the great master of modern literature.
Redonnet's novels have been compared to those of Annie Ernaux, Alain Robbe-Grillet, and Samuel Beckett. She has since acknowledged the crucial influence which Beckett's work has had upon her literary work. And yet she is also notably different from the great master of modern literature.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 30 of 93 reviews
February 19, 2023
https://kansasbooks.blogspot.com/2023...
“A la abuela no le gustaba el teatro, pero el cine le atraía. Estaba suscrita a todas las revistas de cine. Su película preferida, que había visto varias veces de joven, era Hotel Splendid. Esta película es la que le dio la idea a su hotel Hotel Splendid. En la película el hotel no estaba a orillas de un pantano, estaba en un oasis en medio de la arena. El viento no dejaba de soplar, el oasis se iba cubriendo de arena poco a poco, y el hotel también. La abuela me contaba a menudo la historia del Hotel Splendid hundido bajo la arena del desierto. No había peligro de que eso sucediese a orillas del pantano. Eso debió decirse la abuela al escoger ese lugar para su hotel."
Reconozco que me ha flipado esta novela claustrofóbica y por momentos angustiosa, sobre un hotel a la orilla de un pantano. Es difícil expresarlo con palabras, pero hay libros que en cuanto los empiezas sabes que van por buen camino porque la conexión con el tono y el autor no es fugaz, sino que sabes que perdurará. Es lo que me ha pasado con Hotel Splendid; la conexión con Marie Redonnet y la forma en que juega con los tiempos fue instantánea... como dosifica este tiempo con sus frases cortas y directas, cargadas con una elipsis siempre presente, porque aunque sean frases cortas y directas, en cada una de ellas se adivina un mundo más allá, un algo que hay siempre presente y que la autora deja a la imaginación del lector, como por ejemplo esa imagen borrosa de su madre enfrentada a esa imagen siempre presente e idealizada de la abuela. Una dicotomía que no se revela pero que juega en favor de la novela a la hora de conferirle esa vena de misterio ¿nunca resuelto?
"Siento gratitud por los hombres de la obra. Los necesito. No son como mis hermanas. Podría pasar tranquilamente sin su presencia. Nunca viví con ellas y ahora resulta que comparten mi vida. Fue madre quien les pidió que vinieran al Splendid, poco antes de morir. No me preguntó qué opinaba. Quería que me ocupase de mis hermanas cuando ella ya no estuviese. Pero yo prefiero ocuparme de los clientes del Splendid..."
En Hotel Splendid, una narradora sin nombre dirige un hotel a la orilla de un pantano. El hotel familiar, que parece ser que tuvo su buena época cuando su abuela lo construyó, heredado por esta nieta sin nombre, ahora se cae a pedazos, con goteras continuas, plagas de ratas, vigas que se hunden y poco a poco absorbido por el pantano que es una especie de vampiro que lo succiona. La narradora no vive sola, sus hermanas se aposentaron en el hotel una vez fallecida su madre, dos parásitos que no contribuyen demasiado a hacerle la vida fácil a la narradora, todo lo contrario. A pesar de los problemas del hotel, todavía es capaz de mantenerse gracias a la compañía ferroviaria que envía geólogos, ingenieros y prospectores a inspeccionar el terreno para construir una via férrea frente al hotel. El ritmo lo proporcionan estas idas y venidas de los huéspedes, hombres solo, en un espacio que no solo se cae a pedazos, sino que parece dejar sin energía a quién lo ocupa.
"Se diría que espera algo que no acaba de suceder. Durante el día, cuando el hotel está vacío, parece perdida. Va y viene. Flota dentro de sus vestidos."
Las hermanas, que sí tienen nombres, Ada y Adel, y estos huéspedes interactúan, cosa que no vemos hacer a la narradora, siempre presente pero siempre aislada, que en una especie de bucle continuo, lucha por mantener el hotel a flote, en una repetición de tareas continua, un flujo de conciencia continuo y repetitivo. El hotel además se ve acosado por extrañas enfermedades producidas quizás por esa bestia negra en forma de pantano. El pantano que es casi el otro auténtico protagonista de esta novela, junto al hotel, está siempre presente como el causante de todos los males, aunque también es la causa de que el hotel pueda tener todavía huéspedes que le proporcionen algunos ingresos. Es una especie de fuerza salvaje que a medida que el hotel se va descomponiendo, se va haciendo más fuerte.
"El pantano está helado por completo. Adel se pasa todo el día en el pantano. Busca yacimientos. No ve ni rastro. Los prospectores no eran muy habladores. Adel ha perdido la ilusión por el pantano. Para ella, es inexplorable. De pronto ya no cree en nada. Es la edad, la que se le echa encima. No hay nada peor que la edad para una actriz. Le afligen todos los papeles que no ha interpretado."
El estilo de Maria Redonnet es totalmente minimalista: frases cortas, directas, que salen de la narradora en un disparo continuo de tareas por hacer, problemas que resolver, recuerdos que pensar… El caso es que en este estilo no hay profundidad psicológica, ni giros imprevistos sino el fluir de la vida y a partir de aquí habrá que ir desbrozando estas frases cortas para ver más allá de lo que se revela. Sabemos que hay más de lo que cuenta Marie Redonnet, sobre todo en lo que se refiere a la obsesiva narradora pero quizás lo genial está en intuirlo y buscarlo entre el texto. Marie Redonnet construye una novela en un espacio que parece fuera del tiempo, con una narradora que parece esconder mucho más de lo que revela lo que confiere a esta novela una atmósfera totalmente atemporal, con unas repeticiones que poco a poco van calando dejando ver más allá de lo que ella va contando. Una novela que me ha impactado. Graciasss Malas Tierras.
"Me siento diferente a mis hermanas, sin duda porque nunca he salido del Splendid. Ya no pienso en el porvenir. Ya solo cuenta el presente."
“A la abuela no le gustaba el teatro, pero el cine le atraía. Estaba suscrita a todas las revistas de cine. Su película preferida, que había visto varias veces de joven, era Hotel Splendid. Esta película es la que le dio la idea a su hotel Hotel Splendid. En la película el hotel no estaba a orillas de un pantano, estaba en un oasis en medio de la arena. El viento no dejaba de soplar, el oasis se iba cubriendo de arena poco a poco, y el hotel también. La abuela me contaba a menudo la historia del Hotel Splendid hundido bajo la arena del desierto. No había peligro de que eso sucediese a orillas del pantano. Eso debió decirse la abuela al escoger ese lugar para su hotel."
Reconozco que me ha flipado esta novela claustrofóbica y por momentos angustiosa, sobre un hotel a la orilla de un pantano. Es difícil expresarlo con palabras, pero hay libros que en cuanto los empiezas sabes que van por buen camino porque la conexión con el tono y el autor no es fugaz, sino que sabes que perdurará. Es lo que me ha pasado con Hotel Splendid; la conexión con Marie Redonnet y la forma en que juega con los tiempos fue instantánea... como dosifica este tiempo con sus frases cortas y directas, cargadas con una elipsis siempre presente, porque aunque sean frases cortas y directas, en cada una de ellas se adivina un mundo más allá, un algo que hay siempre presente y que la autora deja a la imaginación del lector, como por ejemplo esa imagen borrosa de su madre enfrentada a esa imagen siempre presente e idealizada de la abuela. Una dicotomía que no se revela pero que juega en favor de la novela a la hora de conferirle esa vena de misterio ¿nunca resuelto?
"Siento gratitud por los hombres de la obra. Los necesito. No son como mis hermanas. Podría pasar tranquilamente sin su presencia. Nunca viví con ellas y ahora resulta que comparten mi vida. Fue madre quien les pidió que vinieran al Splendid, poco antes de morir. No me preguntó qué opinaba. Quería que me ocupase de mis hermanas cuando ella ya no estuviese. Pero yo prefiero ocuparme de los clientes del Splendid..."
En Hotel Splendid, una narradora sin nombre dirige un hotel a la orilla de un pantano. El hotel familiar, que parece ser que tuvo su buena época cuando su abuela lo construyó, heredado por esta nieta sin nombre, ahora se cae a pedazos, con goteras continuas, plagas de ratas, vigas que se hunden y poco a poco absorbido por el pantano que es una especie de vampiro que lo succiona. La narradora no vive sola, sus hermanas se aposentaron en el hotel una vez fallecida su madre, dos parásitos que no contribuyen demasiado a hacerle la vida fácil a la narradora, todo lo contrario. A pesar de los problemas del hotel, todavía es capaz de mantenerse gracias a la compañía ferroviaria que envía geólogos, ingenieros y prospectores a inspeccionar el terreno para construir una via férrea frente al hotel. El ritmo lo proporcionan estas idas y venidas de los huéspedes, hombres solo, en un espacio que no solo se cae a pedazos, sino que parece dejar sin energía a quién lo ocupa.
"Se diría que espera algo que no acaba de suceder. Durante el día, cuando el hotel está vacío, parece perdida. Va y viene. Flota dentro de sus vestidos."
Las hermanas, que sí tienen nombres, Ada y Adel, y estos huéspedes interactúan, cosa que no vemos hacer a la narradora, siempre presente pero siempre aislada, que en una especie de bucle continuo, lucha por mantener el hotel a flote, en una repetición de tareas continua, un flujo de conciencia continuo y repetitivo. El hotel además se ve acosado por extrañas enfermedades producidas quizás por esa bestia negra en forma de pantano. El pantano que es casi el otro auténtico protagonista de esta novela, junto al hotel, está siempre presente como el causante de todos los males, aunque también es la causa de que el hotel pueda tener todavía huéspedes que le proporcionen algunos ingresos. Es una especie de fuerza salvaje que a medida que el hotel se va descomponiendo, se va haciendo más fuerte.
"El pantano está helado por completo. Adel se pasa todo el día en el pantano. Busca yacimientos. No ve ni rastro. Los prospectores no eran muy habladores. Adel ha perdido la ilusión por el pantano. Para ella, es inexplorable. De pronto ya no cree en nada. Es la edad, la que se le echa encima. No hay nada peor que la edad para una actriz. Le afligen todos los papeles que no ha interpretado."
El estilo de Maria Redonnet es totalmente minimalista: frases cortas, directas, que salen de la narradora en un disparo continuo de tareas por hacer, problemas que resolver, recuerdos que pensar… El caso es que en este estilo no hay profundidad psicológica, ni giros imprevistos sino el fluir de la vida y a partir de aquí habrá que ir desbrozando estas frases cortas para ver más allá de lo que se revela. Sabemos que hay más de lo que cuenta Marie Redonnet, sobre todo en lo que se refiere a la obsesiva narradora pero quizás lo genial está en intuirlo y buscarlo entre el texto. Marie Redonnet construye una novela en un espacio que parece fuera del tiempo, con una narradora que parece esconder mucho más de lo que revela lo que confiere a esta novela una atmósfera totalmente atemporal, con unas repeticiones que poco a poco van calando dejando ver más allá de lo que ella va contando. Una novela que me ha impactado. Graciasss Malas Tierras.
"Me siento diferente a mis hermanas, sin duda porque nunca he salido del Splendid. Ya no pienso en el porvenir. Ya solo cuenta el presente."
April 27, 2012
Absolutely stunning black comedy crimsoned with a potpourri of genre flares, so that the crystallised synthesis eludes Genus.
Ostensibly about three sisters who own a decrepit hotel of the eponymous title, but really about deconstruction and amortisation.
A nameless, faceless female narrator runs a decaying hotel at the edge of a swamp in no man’s land. Saddled with two ageing spinster sisters whose resemblance to Blanche Dubois is uncanny, and whose antics are scripted from ‘Whatever happened to Baby Jane’, said narrator has to deal with the gradual decomposition of the hotel, always referenced to the encroaching swamp, the real centrepiece of the novel.
The dead pan, laconic, passive voice delivery is chilling: and moreover, the perfect forum for the unreliable narrator. As there is no direct speech, events are framed through the interpretive matrix of the narrator, and it quickly becomes apparent that she may in fact be responsible for a great many of the maladies afflicting not least the hotel guests. There is also the unnerving repetition: always repetition: the same sentence, the same idea, cropping up time and again to reaffirm and consolidate.
The hotel itself is afflicted in biblical proportions. Epidemics, infestations, floods and other calamities are precipitated in a ‘ten deadly plague’ opus . The boils (on the sisters), the disease (hotel was quarantined), the flies (these feature prominently): and so on. Delectable little twist, or what?.
Whilst the hotel disintegrates in Ballardian fashion (but just like Ballard’s High Rise never succumbs, because in in Dorian Gray fashion the real decomposition immolates the inhabitants: allegory), there is a lot, a lot of lavatory duty going on. Toilets are continuously blocked, and the proprieties spends her life with a ‘bucket and spade’ clearing the waste. This recurring faecal theme is intriguing: a float of human excrement in extremis. Who was it that wrote ‘the Wasteland’?
A brilliant, understated ironical take on a bette noir: the quotidian.
Love it, love it, love it.
Ostensibly about three sisters who own a decrepit hotel of the eponymous title, but really about deconstruction and amortisation.
A nameless, faceless female narrator runs a decaying hotel at the edge of a swamp in no man’s land. Saddled with two ageing spinster sisters whose resemblance to Blanche Dubois is uncanny, and whose antics are scripted from ‘Whatever happened to Baby Jane’, said narrator has to deal with the gradual decomposition of the hotel, always referenced to the encroaching swamp, the real centrepiece of the novel.
The dead pan, laconic, passive voice delivery is chilling: and moreover, the perfect forum for the unreliable narrator. As there is no direct speech, events are framed through the interpretive matrix of the narrator, and it quickly becomes apparent that she may in fact be responsible for a great many of the maladies afflicting not least the hotel guests. There is also the unnerving repetition: always repetition: the same sentence, the same idea, cropping up time and again to reaffirm and consolidate.
The hotel itself is afflicted in biblical proportions. Epidemics, infestations, floods and other calamities are precipitated in a ‘ten deadly plague’ opus . The boils (on the sisters), the disease (hotel was quarantined), the flies (these feature prominently): and so on. Delectable little twist, or what?.
Whilst the hotel disintegrates in Ballardian fashion (but just like Ballard’s High Rise never succumbs, because in in Dorian Gray fashion the real decomposition immolates the inhabitants: allegory), there is a lot, a lot of lavatory duty going on. Toilets are continuously blocked, and the proprieties spends her life with a ‘bucket and spade’ clearing the waste. This recurring faecal theme is intriguing: a float of human excrement in extremis. Who was it that wrote ‘the Wasteland’?
A brilliant, understated ironical take on a bette noir: the quotidian.
Love it, love it, love it.
February 20, 2016
A teetering hotel of Sisyphean perseverance, built at the edge of a vast, insatiable swamp of dismay and misfortune. Is this Marie Redonnet's view of life itself? Conveyed in an unending stream of simple, single-observation sentences that pile up in drifts of mundane hardship page by page, this has the sort of absurdly mechanical misery I associate with the Beckett I've read (a comparison not lost on any of the other critics, or on Redonnet herself, who says that Beckett opened a door and she stepped through). But the fact that our single-minded hotel-keeper narrator manages to continue throughout the novel's length and endlessly progressing seasons of decline (ice, fog, flood), to trudge through these cycles with the hotel still somehow operating and to find herself able still to observe rare instants of beauty glittering all the more so out of the deathly starkness of the surrounding prose -- the fact that the novel and narrator's resignation somehow manage to rise out from this banality of despair elevates both into bold acts of resistance.
November 16, 2011
Redonnet has a disquieting stylish simplicity: she writes each sentence on thin ice—cool and exacting—threatening the next moment to crash into freezing inscrutable waters. This tale, narrated by the third in a trio of sisters running a derelict swamp-side hotel, bares a striking similarity to the Bouvier sisters. That is, Jackie Onassis’s eccentric kin who holed themselves up in their Grey Gardens mansion in self-imposed exile, until Mrs. O paid an overdue visit and rescued them from pneumonia. (See the good film).Here, Rimbaud’s Hôtel Splendid is inverted: rats, damp, insect swarms, clogged toilets and tropical fevers complete the visitors’ stay in the house of horrors. The narrator takes it all in her stride, chillingly detached until the whole operation crumbles around her—nary a tear, but many a drop of sweat—spent. Ecstatically unique. See also Sorrentino’s take on Rimbaud, Splendide-Hôtel.
September 15, 2015
Simple sentences, very few dependent clauses, a constant battering of direct SVO type communications always inside the head of our narrator, who is not, possibly, as self-aware and reliable as she might be. This technique which could, in other hands, lead to a sort of leaden, lumpen mess actually produces a kind of narrative by accretion, a little layering up, that allows us as readers to see things that the narrator doesn't. So, there is repetition (how do we know she is obsessed with the sanitaires? repetition), but there is also a gradual revelation of contradiction and discord (grand-mère was a genius to do this the way she did it, grand-mère really screwed this up, why is it a hotel on a swamp made of rotting wood and crazy plumbing?), and also a sense of guilt displaced and suppressed (whose fault is it? pretty much never our narrator's, and there is a strong tendency to believe her until you realize how often she has said that sentence, or you really think through its content: is it really unreasonable of the guests to not drink the tap water which has been deemed potable in small amounts only?).
Finally, there are things that receive very little attention: though obsessed with all sorts of mundane things, our narrator tells us very little about her absent mother who (one guesses) abandoned (?) this child while raising her two sisters, then finally abandoned the two sisters to their sister's care (or "care" as the case may be); that same mother who is always fuzzy in the background of family photographs. There is a story hiding here, but it is not really ever revealed, which marks a nice change from narrative expectations, no plot twist, no hard psychological searching, no facile analysis that leads you to sigh out, ah, so THAT's why she's so screwed up!
All in all, I was impressed by this, and more amused than I expected for a book so bleak in outlook.
Also, I note with interest that this is the third of three édition de minuit books that I have read with great pleasure in the last few weeks. I think it's worth keeping an eye peeled for some of their other authors from various periods.
Finally, there are things that receive very little attention: though obsessed with all sorts of mundane things, our narrator tells us very little about her absent mother who (one guesses) abandoned (?) this child while raising her two sisters, then finally abandoned the two sisters to their sister's care (or "care" as the case may be); that same mother who is always fuzzy in the background of family photographs. There is a story hiding here, but it is not really ever revealed, which marks a nice change from narrative expectations, no plot twist, no hard psychological searching, no facile analysis that leads you to sigh out, ah, so THAT's why she's so screwed up!
All in all, I was impressed by this, and more amused than I expected for a book so bleak in outlook.
Also, I note with interest that this is the third of three édition de minuit books that I have read with great pleasure in the last few weeks. I think it's worth keeping an eye peeled for some of their other authors from various periods.
February 14, 2023
Imposible no acordarse de la ciénaga de Manganelli leyendo a Redonnet. La traducción de Rubén Martín Giráldez es fantástica, dándole al texto una cadencia perfecta. El libro se lee como si fuese una letanía.
March 27, 2015
Wow. What an unrelenting disaster that constantly gets remade and disfigured. Redonnet's creation is set against a backdrop of water and swallowing sands. In addition to the sponge-like rotting of anything made of wood, everything else is corroding and falling into disrepair. Especially the humans. Even birds. Disease and discomfort permeate the novel as does the swamp's encroachment on anything thought to be stable. The constant bombardment of reality disrupts the head-in-the-clouds utopia wishing to prevail. This is a dream no one should want. And it never stops. Why does anyone read a book like this? And then, why not?
December 31, 2015
Hypnotic portrait of doom and futility.
March 24, 2023
Me ha resultado insoportable, en tema y estilo.
No entiendo qué me ha querido contar y la técnica literaria de frases cortísimas me ha sacado de mis casillas.
Repetitivo hasta la náusea, lo he acabado leyendo en diagonal por si pasaba algo distinto a lo que ya me habia contado decenas de veces en las paginas anteriores.
No pasa nada distinto.
No entiendo qué me ha querido contar y la técnica literaria de frases cortísimas me ha sacado de mis casillas.
Repetitivo hasta la náusea, lo he acabado leyendo en diagonal por si pasaba algo distinto a lo que ya me habia contado decenas de veces en las paginas anteriores.
No pasa nada distinto.
May 20, 2021
A one-of-a-kind masterpiece.
•
“I understand grandmother. The Hôtel Splendid was her life. And me too, without the Splendid, what would become of me?”
•
“I understand grandmother. The Hôtel Splendid was her life. And me too, without the Splendid, what would become of me?”
March 20, 2009
HÔTEL SPLENDID & SPLENDIDE-HÔTEL take their title from the first poem of rimbaud’s ILLUMINATIONS (”And the Hôtel-Splendide was built in the chaos of ice and polar night.”)
HÔTEL SPLENDID is one of marie redonnet’s trilogy of death — the others are FOREVER VALLEY and ROSE MELLIE ROSE. i haven’t read the last, but like FOREVER VALLEY, HÔTEL SPLENDID is a thin book packed with modern anxiety in an oddly proto-modern setting. this time we’re in a rustic hotel set amidst a sucking, sulfuric swamp. less effective for me i think than FOREVER VALLEY (possibly because the hotel is a more familiar device and thus more in danger of being used as a cliche) HÔTEL SPLENDID was still impressive for its accumulative feeling of anxiety. its main character’s desperate attempt to keep up the rotting, leaking building as well as attend to her sisters ailments and hostilities, was perfect allegory for the burden of all our constant anxieties: bourgeois real estate phobias, hypochondria and contagion paranoia, and the melancholy in seeing the flesh’s various evidence of its encroaching age.
redonnet’s work is particularly virtuosic with time. time contracts and leaps in her writing. within a paragraph, between sentences, we can oddly jump weeks and then linger for pages on a single incident only to pass through a night in a phrase’s brief flourish. the effect is somewhat like reading an irregular diary — quickpenned and intense during moments of drama but languishing for long trials or spurted into with a feverish insight. and yet also her writing undercuts this diary-like inconsistency with its repeating, inescapable and unchanging obsessions. maybe a better comparison than diary is the fever dream, which moves forward in jumpcuts and then traps you in over-hot, looping nightmare scenes.
sorrentino’s SPLENDIDE-HÔTEL is a beautiful artwork of prose, constructed with just the slightest bits of conceit and image: the idea of rimbaud’s hotel and an alphabet primer (and maybe doc williams’ wheel barrow). from these he plays riffs on his favorite themes: the necessary artifice of literary work, our ceaseless acts of corruption, a paradoxically unsentimental nostalgia for mid-century america. i always thought SPLENDIDE-HÔTEL was ever-so-slightly marred by its occasional interluding poems which, even in his parodic modes, necessarily fall short in comparison to his dazzling sentences. nonetheless sorrentino delivers some of his best work here. the paragraphs are a wonder of shifting and connected precise perceptions; he’s enormously funny — a pitch black humor; and the sentences that have that old world panache so one can’t help but think: they don’t make them like that anymore…
here’s a bit:
"B-b-b-b-b. The sound an idiot makes. I remember Jo-Jo, ah, a perfect idiot name. A Mongoloid, shuffling down the street on the arm of his grey and faded Irish mother, punching himself in the face. Yet we all stand now as idiots in the face of the mass devastation of feeling that abounds. A culture that can give no sustenance, and yet the remedies are for still more 'useful skills.' Useful skills, and the heart dies, the imagination crippled so that mere boys are become mass murderers or drift blindly into a sterile adulthood. The young, the young! In a stupendous rage of nonbelief–faced with a spurious culture, the art that can give life sullied or made unavailable. What art there is is cheap and false, dedicated to a quick assay of the superficial. Don’t believe for a moment that art is a decoration or an emblem. It is what life there is left, though ill-used, ill-used. The young crying for nourishment, and they are given the cynical products of the most fickle market. “Look at what passes for the new,” the poet says. Put a handle on it and sell it, cotton candy: to be gone in a moment and leave no memory other than the memory of sickening sweetness" (p. 9).
HÔTEL SPLENDID is one of marie redonnet’s trilogy of death — the others are FOREVER VALLEY and ROSE MELLIE ROSE. i haven’t read the last, but like FOREVER VALLEY, HÔTEL SPLENDID is a thin book packed with modern anxiety in an oddly proto-modern setting. this time we’re in a rustic hotel set amidst a sucking, sulfuric swamp. less effective for me i think than FOREVER VALLEY (possibly because the hotel is a more familiar device and thus more in danger of being used as a cliche) HÔTEL SPLENDID was still impressive for its accumulative feeling of anxiety. its main character’s desperate attempt to keep up the rotting, leaking building as well as attend to her sisters ailments and hostilities, was perfect allegory for the burden of all our constant anxieties: bourgeois real estate phobias, hypochondria and contagion paranoia, and the melancholy in seeing the flesh’s various evidence of its encroaching age.
redonnet’s work is particularly virtuosic with time. time contracts and leaps in her writing. within a paragraph, between sentences, we can oddly jump weeks and then linger for pages on a single incident only to pass through a night in a phrase’s brief flourish. the effect is somewhat like reading an irregular diary — quickpenned and intense during moments of drama but languishing for long trials or spurted into with a feverish insight. and yet also her writing undercuts this diary-like inconsistency with its repeating, inescapable and unchanging obsessions. maybe a better comparison than diary is the fever dream, which moves forward in jumpcuts and then traps you in over-hot, looping nightmare scenes.
sorrentino’s SPLENDIDE-HÔTEL is a beautiful artwork of prose, constructed with just the slightest bits of conceit and image: the idea of rimbaud’s hotel and an alphabet primer (and maybe doc williams’ wheel barrow). from these he plays riffs on his favorite themes: the necessary artifice of literary work, our ceaseless acts of corruption, a paradoxically unsentimental nostalgia for mid-century america. i always thought SPLENDIDE-HÔTEL was ever-so-slightly marred by its occasional interluding poems which, even in his parodic modes, necessarily fall short in comparison to his dazzling sentences. nonetheless sorrentino delivers some of his best work here. the paragraphs are a wonder of shifting and connected precise perceptions; he’s enormously funny — a pitch black humor; and the sentences that have that old world panache so one can’t help but think: they don’t make them like that anymore…
here’s a bit:
"B-b-b-b-b. The sound an idiot makes. I remember Jo-Jo, ah, a perfect idiot name. A Mongoloid, shuffling down the street on the arm of his grey and faded Irish mother, punching himself in the face. Yet we all stand now as idiots in the face of the mass devastation of feeling that abounds. A culture that can give no sustenance, and yet the remedies are for still more 'useful skills.' Useful skills, and the heart dies, the imagination crippled so that mere boys are become mass murderers or drift blindly into a sterile adulthood. The young, the young! In a stupendous rage of nonbelief–faced with a spurious culture, the art that can give life sullied or made unavailable. What art there is is cheap and false, dedicated to a quick assay of the superficial. Don’t believe for a moment that art is a decoration or an emblem. It is what life there is left, though ill-used, ill-used. The young crying for nourishment, and they are given the cynical products of the most fickle market. “Look at what passes for the new,” the poet says. Put a handle on it and sell it, cotton candy: to be gone in a moment and leave no memory other than the memory of sickening sweetness" (p. 9).
March 11, 2023
Normalmente odiaría este libro pero… ¿me ha encantado? El estilo es inexistente y eso, a la vez, hace que tenga un estilo muy marcado, con frases concisas hasta lo extremo. La historia se mueve en la ansiedad de la protagonista por mantener a flote el Hotel Splendid. Y eso me generaba un agobio que se amplificaba por la intensidad de la narración. Aquí no solo los personajes pueden enfermar, también lo hace el pantano y el propio hotel, lo cual le confiere casi un aura misteriosa a esta historia. Todo se viene abajo desde el principio y la tensión la mantiene la voz que lo narra, que lucha por que todo se estabilice a pesar de lo inevitable.
December 28, 2023
4,5. Dette er nok ikke en bok for alle, men virkelig min smak!!
November 16, 2025
sometimes I feel like I, too, have inherited a hotel that is crumbling to pieces.
Read
October 15, 2025Perfect for fans of: seepage; doubling; repetition; illness and disease; unblocking lavatories.
March 31, 2024
This is probably the first book I have read solely on my own this year, as everything else I have read with friends. And I’m really happy it was this book I read alone; after being displaced from flooding, I needed to read about someone else going through it, facing the ceaseless flow of domestic inconveniences and problems whose fixes feel indefinitely suspended.
It is refreshing to read a narrator embracing a state of discontent so relentlessly rather than trying to focus on the positives. However this is not a ranting prose style. Redonnet keeps it simple, concise, limited to one abrupt thought per sentence, reflecting the narrator’s frenetic position as hotelier, not afforded a single moment to stop, reflect, or think at length. There is always another pipe to unclog, another wooden beam to treat, another part of the swamp becoming subsumed by the tide.
“I am realizing how perishable everything is. I used to think the Hotel Splendid was indestructible. It was built so solidly. How wrong I was.” It took me most of the short book to recognize the great melancholy underlying all of this chaos. The real tragedy the narrator faces is the tragedy of inheritance, the impossibility of retaining the perfect state of a place one remembers from childhood against the ravages of time.
An oddly lovely read about moments when the mundane, meaningless chaos of living just won’t let up, and a reminder that things will get worse and life will still be livable. “From far away, the Splendid must look like a boat that has run aground there on the snow, with its wooden hull half rotted away. There is no chance of it sinking, since it has run aground.”
It is refreshing to read a narrator embracing a state of discontent so relentlessly rather than trying to focus on the positives. However this is not a ranting prose style. Redonnet keeps it simple, concise, limited to one abrupt thought per sentence, reflecting the narrator’s frenetic position as hotelier, not afforded a single moment to stop, reflect, or think at length. There is always another pipe to unclog, another wooden beam to treat, another part of the swamp becoming subsumed by the tide.
“I am realizing how perishable everything is. I used to think the Hotel Splendid was indestructible. It was built so solidly. How wrong I was.” It took me most of the short book to recognize the great melancholy underlying all of this chaos. The real tragedy the narrator faces is the tragedy of inheritance, the impossibility of retaining the perfect state of a place one remembers from childhood against the ravages of time.
An oddly lovely read about moments when the mundane, meaningless chaos of living just won’t let up, and a reminder that things will get worse and life will still be livable. “From far away, the Splendid must look like a boat that has run aground there on the snow, with its wooden hull half rotted away. There is no chance of it sinking, since it has run aground.”
August 25, 2023
Marie Redonnet no tiene pluma sino bisturí. Sus frases cortas y certeras son incisiones; a veces leves y otras profundas. Por fortuna (o no), también ofrece el bálsamo para las heridas que abre con su escritura. Visiten el Hotel Splendid.
December 8, 2023
Esto si que es un libro intenso y con un estilo personal de escritura. Maravilloso
November 28, 2023
Per com està escrit és tan fàcil sentir l’ansietat de la protagonista, entendre com se sent tot i que a vegades aquests sentiments siguin contradictoris. Ser anònima perquè l’única cosa important és l’hotel i els canvis de temps.
February 3, 2024
Rather dull. She is not, after all, Samuel Beckett
November 2, 2013
Life is always evolving, society is forever progressing and we are all getting better and better in every way -- claim certain religious types and all advertising men. But, as you may have noticed, it sure as hell doesn't feel that way and that is where Marie Redonnet steps in, as Beckett did, to give us a taste of what life actually feels like: a hotel on the edge of swamp with one sister who is perpetually ill and another who dreams uselessly of being an actress. Life keeps looping around and the toilets never remain unblocked for long. We firmly intend to give up and somehow we don't get around to it.
In Hôtel Splendid, things getting slightly better is always a set-up for things getting significantly worse. Redonnet's staccato sentences, usually 5 to 10 words long, pile up like problems or bills to be paid and patter like rain on the roof. It is very likely that this elegant French novella contains more blocked lavatories than any in the history of literature.
This book is nothing but problems one after another and I can honestly say that I enjoyed it more than anything else I've read all year. It is absolutely transfixing. I laughed out loud so many times and I cannot provide a single example because you have to read it and fall into its strange rhythm and world until reading the words "The head foreman was bitten right in the calf by a rat" provokes you to laughter in spite of yourself.
Here's one taste. (Redonnet works in blocks of text approximately three to six pages long without paragraph breaks.) From page 17: "The swamp deserves more attention. It is a real nature preserve. There is always more of it to explore. Ada seems to be convalescing. The empty hotel is good for her. Even though she has always hated the swamp, she asked me to take her there for a walk. I was sure the swamp would do her good. That is the first time Ada has asked to go out. But she was disappointed by her walk. She couldn't bear the odor of the swamp. She thought it was always the same, no matter which way you turned. She couldn't stop shivering, in spite of the blanket she was wrapped in. When we got back, she went right to bed. She had a high fever. I had to give her a hot-water bottle. It did not warm her at all. She says her limbs are like lead. She blames the swamp for her relapse. She will never go back there again. The walk was not a success."
I discovered this book by reading Dalkey Archive's Best European Fiction 2013, which contained some lively stories and some pretentious ones but nothing that compared to the story "Madame Zabee's Guesthouse" by Marie Redonnet. Searching online, I found three short novels (Hôtel Splendid is the first) translated almost twenty years ago and another translated ten years later. (There is also a collection of short stories, now so rare a copy of it will cost you five hundred dollars!) Reading Hotel Splendid made me hope that new work will soon be available, including a collection of short fictions. Redonnet's work is weirdly irresistible, like an unsettling dream you can't stop dreaming.
In Hôtel Splendid, things getting slightly better is always a set-up for things getting significantly worse. Redonnet's staccato sentences, usually 5 to 10 words long, pile up like problems or bills to be paid and patter like rain on the roof. It is very likely that this elegant French novella contains more blocked lavatories than any in the history of literature.
This book is nothing but problems one after another and I can honestly say that I enjoyed it more than anything else I've read all year. It is absolutely transfixing. I laughed out loud so many times and I cannot provide a single example because you have to read it and fall into its strange rhythm and world until reading the words "The head foreman was bitten right in the calf by a rat" provokes you to laughter in spite of yourself.
Here's one taste. (Redonnet works in blocks of text approximately three to six pages long without paragraph breaks.) From page 17: "The swamp deserves more attention. It is a real nature preserve. There is always more of it to explore. Ada seems to be convalescing. The empty hotel is good for her. Even though she has always hated the swamp, she asked me to take her there for a walk. I was sure the swamp would do her good. That is the first time Ada has asked to go out. But she was disappointed by her walk. She couldn't bear the odor of the swamp. She thought it was always the same, no matter which way you turned. She couldn't stop shivering, in spite of the blanket she was wrapped in. When we got back, she went right to bed. She had a high fever. I had to give her a hot-water bottle. It did not warm her at all. She says her limbs are like lead. She blames the swamp for her relapse. She will never go back there again. The walk was not a success."
I discovered this book by reading Dalkey Archive's Best European Fiction 2013, which contained some lively stories and some pretentious ones but nothing that compared to the story "Madame Zabee's Guesthouse" by Marie Redonnet. Searching online, I found three short novels (Hôtel Splendid is the first) translated almost twenty years ago and another translated ten years later. (There is also a collection of short stories, now so rare a copy of it will cost you five hundred dollars!) Reading Hotel Splendid made me hope that new work will soon be available, including a collection of short fictions. Redonnet's work is weirdly irresistible, like an unsettling dream you can't stop dreaming.
August 20, 2022
Rarely do I give a book five stars. Hotel Splendid earns five stars easily. Gloom permeates this book. The characters make you think. We never meet the grandmother or the mother, she who in photos is always blurred, yet we know them. And we know the relationship between them and Ada and Adel and the narrator. Why did mother not take the narrator from the Hotel Splendid? She was not I’ll like Ada. She had no perceived talent like Adel. Grandmother left the Hotel Splendid to her. Mother, Ada, and Adel got nothing. The Hotel Splendid is in ruins. The men who visit prove to be incompetent. Adel gives them her attention. Ada nurses one back to health. The narrator worries without relief about the lavatories, the the failing roof, the rotting beams, the expanding swamp swallowing the cemetery. She spends her days unclogging pipes. The plumber dies. The Hotel Splendid is everything to her. Read it.
February 28, 2025
Similar to Beckett in that the unadorned, detached style is constantly hinting at some great complex subaltern secret, creating a polyvalent prose. The novel thrives on tension — life / death, matrilineal inheritances, etc. important to note too that like Beckett, the narrators of Redonnet’s works don’t exactly theorize, just observe the machinations of the world around them.
April 16, 2025
cool book sooo harsh! brutal! i'd enjoy reading in french for both 1. the sentence structure and 2. the opportunity to learn some sickening vocab. un rheumatisme.
Read
March 25, 2024Horrifying in a hypnotic way. Like the drips of rancid swamp water eroding the hotel. Really makes you contemplate whether it’s better to survive or die…
May 13, 2020
sublimely swampy. very green, then later very white.
April 28, 2023
La capacidad narrativa de Marie Redonnet es exponencial a una pieza musical de Philip Glass o a Dino Buzzati y "El desierto de los tártaros". Un escenario, el hotel y el pantano. Unos personajes que sobreviven a la angustia cotidiana de la decadencia familiar en una permanente lucha por no caer en el abismo del desgaste del tiempo y la naturaleza.
February 26, 2023
Diría que esto es la literatura.
Me ha encantado la forma en que está escrito, pero quizás no ha sido el mejor fin de semana (se lee en un rato) para leerlo, que angustia, que suma de desgracias, que 115 páginas llenas de desdicha 🤯
Me ha encantado la forma en que está escrito, pero quizás no ha sido el mejor fin de semana (se lee en un rato) para leerlo, que angustia, que suma de desgracias, que 115 páginas llenas de desdicha 🤯
May 19, 2019
I don't know what the hell this was, but I was riveted
Displaying 1 - 30 of 93 reviews