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The Little Hotel
In a small European hotel in the late 1940s a bizarre group of characters, who all seem to be on the run from some past financial, personal or political horror, come together.
191 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1973
49 people are currently reading
347 people want to read
About the author
Christina Stead
39 books127 followersChristina Stead (1902–1983) was an Australian writer regarded as one of the twentieth century’s master novelists. Stead spent most of her writing life in Europe and the United States, and her varied residences acted as the settings for a number of her novels. She is best known for The Man Who Loved Children (1940), which was praised by author Jonathan Franzen as a “crazy, gorgeous family novel” and “one of the great literary achievements of the twentieth century.” Stead died in her native Australia in 1983.
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November 5, 2016
3.5★s
The Little Hotel is the tenth novel published by Australian author, Christina Stead. This edition is published under the Text Classics banner and sports a gorgeous colourful cover by the talented W H Chong, as well as an introduction by poet and author, Lisa Gorton. While it was not published until 1973, Stead began writing it, or some version of it, in the early 1950s, based on her diaries of her time in Europe with her partner, communist sympathiser, William Blake, in the fifties.
Mme Selda Bonnard runs Hotel Swiss-Touring with her husband, Roger and their multi-cultural staff. Their guests are equally diverse, and Selda’s observations about them and of their interactions form the bulk of this novel. It’s just a few years after the end of World War Two, and Swiss-Touring is a cheap lake-shore hotel that caters to tourists as well as longer-term residents.
Against a backdrop of paranoia about the possible Russian invasion and the difficulties of retrieving funds from their native lands, the hotel’s guests, past and present, are described in potted histories and anecdotes; their petty crises and domestic dramas are filled with snobbery, racism, jealousy and insecurity. Many of the guests are eccentric; one turns out to be crazy; others may even be dangerous.
Stead evokes post-war Europe with consummate ease, firmly establishing the era with both her characters’ ideas, opinions and dilemmas, and the political and financial situation. This neat little volume will appeal to readers who enjoy historical fiction with a good dose of satire. Classic fiction from an award-winning Australian author.
The Little Hotel is the tenth novel published by Australian author, Christina Stead. This edition is published under the Text Classics banner and sports a gorgeous colourful cover by the talented W H Chong, as well as an introduction by poet and author, Lisa Gorton. While it was not published until 1973, Stead began writing it, or some version of it, in the early 1950s, based on her diaries of her time in Europe with her partner, communist sympathiser, William Blake, in the fifties.
Mme Selda Bonnard runs Hotel Swiss-Touring with her husband, Roger and their multi-cultural staff. Their guests are equally diverse, and Selda’s observations about them and of their interactions form the bulk of this novel. It’s just a few years after the end of World War Two, and Swiss-Touring is a cheap lake-shore hotel that caters to tourists as well as longer-term residents.
Against a backdrop of paranoia about the possible Russian invasion and the difficulties of retrieving funds from their native lands, the hotel’s guests, past and present, are described in potted histories and anecdotes; their petty crises and domestic dramas are filled with snobbery, racism, jealousy and insecurity. Many of the guests are eccentric; one turns out to be crazy; others may even be dangerous.
Stead evokes post-war Europe with consummate ease, firmly establishing the era with both her characters’ ideas, opinions and dilemmas, and the political and financial situation. This neat little volume will appeal to readers who enjoy historical fiction with a good dose of satire. Classic fiction from an award-winning Australian author.
December 8, 2024
If you only read one twentieth-century novel about a hotel on Lake Geneva just outside Lausanne…well, it should probably be Anita Brookner's Hotel du Lac. If you read two, though! Then this is a quite a good choice as the second one.
I can't say it ever entirely grabbed me, to be honest. The focus here is on the fine social distinctions between the various inhabitants of the Hotel Swiss-Touring – the politenesses and improprieties that govern European interpersonal life in the mid-twentieth century. Unlike in Brookner's novel, the hotel here is not a luxury resort for the international jet-set, but something much more down-at-heel – a ‘fourth-class’ lodging, with residents from all points on the social scale.
Though not published until the 1970s, it is set (and the writing of it was begun) in the early '50s. Often, there is a sense that behind the conversations of the main cast, something is being said about the aftermath of the war: there are war profiteers, people trying to move their money away from collapsing empires, paperless vagabonds, nervous conversations about the rise of Communism and the imminence of a Russian invasion.
In the end, though, these are not developed enough to be more than just hints. The book's original title was Mrs Trollope and Madame Blaise, and this might have helped me understand earlier on that we were to pay special attention to these two characters; as it is, we do indeed see the focus narrow on them, but we're not sure why we should care about them in particular. Nevertheless Stead's writing is constantly intelligent, full of close observations, and laced with a dry wit.
I can't say it ever entirely grabbed me, to be honest. The focus here is on the fine social distinctions between the various inhabitants of the Hotel Swiss-Touring – the politenesses and improprieties that govern European interpersonal life in the mid-twentieth century. Unlike in Brookner's novel, the hotel here is not a luxury resort for the international jet-set, but something much more down-at-heel – a ‘fourth-class’ lodging, with residents from all points on the social scale.
Though not published until the 1970s, it is set (and the writing of it was begun) in the early '50s. Often, there is a sense that behind the conversations of the main cast, something is being said about the aftermath of the war: there are war profiteers, people trying to move their money away from collapsing empires, paperless vagabonds, nervous conversations about the rise of Communism and the imminence of a Russian invasion.
In the end, though, these are not developed enough to be more than just hints. The book's original title was Mrs Trollope and Madame Blaise, and this might have helped me understand earlier on that we were to pay special attention to these two characters; as it is, we do indeed see the focus narrow on them, but we're not sure why we should care about them in particular. Nevertheless Stead's writing is constantly intelligent, full of close observations, and laced with a dry wit.
November 23, 2021
The Little Hotel wasn’t published until 1973 but is set in the years immediately after WWII. It’s one of those books/films that have a closed group like a Grand Hotel, a ship of fools, the Orient Express or Rick’s place in Casablanca. Ms. Stead begins by organizing the book around a Swiss hotel proprietress who directs a motley European staff and is the mother hen for a mixed bag of middle aged to older clients. Her hotel is decidedly on the cheaper end of lodgings in town, respectable (of course there are the theater folk in the small attic rooms) and whose clients are mostly hanging in there or on the downward slide. Her husband can’t be dissuaded from snooping around the doors and water pipes hoping to find out who is running out of money or who might be an international spy.
I am more used to seeing the postwar years as an optimistic time but these folks have taken a battering in the war. They are too old to have been soldiers, but their status as citizens and their finances and mental health seem shaky. They continually talk about their fears that the Russians are going to invade Switzerland and that they can’t get their foreign investments into Switzerland for their use.
I truly enjoyed that part of the book, but about halfway through, a lot of new characters suddenly appear and the proprietress nearly disappears. Now we have an anonymous omniscient character telling us about what the characters are doing. The two book parts don’t line up very well and all the characters are very sour and hateful towards each other. I was disappointed after such a promising start.
I am more used to seeing the postwar years as an optimistic time but these folks have taken a battering in the war. They are too old to have been soldiers, but their status as citizens and their finances and mental health seem shaky. They continually talk about their fears that the Russians are going to invade Switzerland and that they can’t get their foreign investments into Switzerland for their use.
I truly enjoyed that part of the book, but about halfway through, a lot of new characters suddenly appear and the proprietress nearly disappears. Now we have an anonymous omniscient character telling us about what the characters are doing. The two book parts don’t line up very well and all the characters are very sour and hateful towards each other. I was disappointed after such a promising start.
June 17, 2010
Exuberantly written as any Stead, but much shorter and thus better shaped than (the masterpieces, NYRB classics and Jonathan Franzen are right) Letty Fox or The Man Who Loved Children. She does something fun with point of view here too, where somehow suddenly the first person narrator drops out and when she finally returns her own storyline does not and then it ends. Kind of ballsy.
January 9, 2019
I think this book is clever but I couldn't find any pleasure in it. It gave me that slightly nauseated feeling that starts to gather after a few minutes of gossip about the faults or antics of unpleasant people who are not present. I guess I sometimes find it a relief to laugh at the contemptibility of my political opponents, but for me this was all too intimate a satire.
Read
July 15, 2011 How good Clara was, said Mrs. Trollope, what a nice woman, one felt comfortable with her.
I said: 'Clara is all right as long as she feels herself admired: she will play up to you. But she is treacherous, underhand, turbulent, and a plotter.'
Though championed by Saul Bellow, this is a minor novel by the great Australian writer Christina Stead. Minor in the most obvious sense - it's a third the size of one of her usual books - and simply because Stead excels at the massive Rabelaisian canvas. A tale that starts and ends was not one of her enduring interests, and here we have a few amusing vignettes, and a few less amusing ones, all set in a nondescript, probably a touch shabby, little Swiss hotel a few years after the end of WWII. Most of the occupants are elderly Europeans (the English commonly crop up) who are various shades of desperate or insane. The book is narrated by the 26 year-old woman who runs the hotel, and Stead proves again to have a terrific ability to reproduce the voice of such a person - as in House of All Nations, with its mostly French cast, she finds a sort of Swiss-German English that's a little halting, a little too precise, and works like a charm. Stead's ability to juggle a number of balls at one time (there are dozens of characters in a novel running under 200 pages) is on full display here - as long as things are filtered through the young owner's perception. At about the halfway point in the book she (Stead) makes the strange decision to change to an omniscient narrator, smooth out the language, and to concentrate on one of the hotel's aging English guests and her relationship with a man who refuses to marry her and who may be simply out to procure her large fortune, along with periphery friends and associates of this character. The novel probably could not have been sustained through the original narrator's voice, simply recounting all the amusing incidents, and the choice to eventually bring a few characters to the fore is right; but Stead's way of doing it is jarring and the book never recovers either its momentum or interest. It feels ultimately like a larger book that the author didn't quite know what to do with, or perhaps got bored with writing.
Just as Christina Stead's pre-war novels set in Europe suggest the disintegration of European culture, The Little Hotel is a microcosm of Europe in ruins, with its pitiful characters on a lifeboat and not a spot of land or ship around. In a letter Stead once complained that she couldn't write "positive" characters. It was not her talent. Aside from the hotel owner no one here comes off as very pleasant, and even she is less a saint than a practical businesswomen. Reprehensible characters, sick, neurotic, or insane, Stead had a special gift for. The joy of The Little Hotel lies in her little portraits.
The Princess said: 'Well, South America is good, there are so many skin diseases. But I met a doctor in New York, a very rich man, a friend of mine, who said nine-tenths of the babies in South America should be gassed; he said the bomb wouldn't do them the least harm; they should be exterminated. He toured South America and he was shocked. American science could do nothing for them. He is a splendid husband and father and he has seven children and knows what he is talking about.'
Lilia said: 'I think that is cruel.'
The Princess said: 'Oh, science is cruel; and this is a cruel age.'
I said: 'Clara is all right as long as she feels herself admired: she will play up to you. But she is treacherous, underhand, turbulent, and a plotter.'
Though championed by Saul Bellow, this is a minor novel by the great Australian writer Christina Stead. Minor in the most obvious sense - it's a third the size of one of her usual books - and simply because Stead excels at the massive Rabelaisian canvas. A tale that starts and ends was not one of her enduring interests, and here we have a few amusing vignettes, and a few less amusing ones, all set in a nondescript, probably a touch shabby, little Swiss hotel a few years after the end of WWII. Most of the occupants are elderly Europeans (the English commonly crop up) who are various shades of desperate or insane. The book is narrated by the 26 year-old woman who runs the hotel, and Stead proves again to have a terrific ability to reproduce the voice of such a person - as in House of All Nations, with its mostly French cast, she finds a sort of Swiss-German English that's a little halting, a little too precise, and works like a charm. Stead's ability to juggle a number of balls at one time (there are dozens of characters in a novel running under 200 pages) is on full display here - as long as things are filtered through the young owner's perception. At about the halfway point in the book she (Stead) makes the strange decision to change to an omniscient narrator, smooth out the language, and to concentrate on one of the hotel's aging English guests and her relationship with a man who refuses to marry her and who may be simply out to procure her large fortune, along with periphery friends and associates of this character. The novel probably could not have been sustained through the original narrator's voice, simply recounting all the amusing incidents, and the choice to eventually bring a few characters to the fore is right; but Stead's way of doing it is jarring and the book never recovers either its momentum or interest. It feels ultimately like a larger book that the author didn't quite know what to do with, or perhaps got bored with writing.
Just as Christina Stead's pre-war novels set in Europe suggest the disintegration of European culture, The Little Hotel is a microcosm of Europe in ruins, with its pitiful characters on a lifeboat and not a spot of land or ship around. In a letter Stead once complained that she couldn't write "positive" characters. It was not her talent. Aside from the hotel owner no one here comes off as very pleasant, and even she is less a saint than a practical businesswomen. Reprehensible characters, sick, neurotic, or insane, Stead had a special gift for. The joy of The Little Hotel lies in her little portraits.
The Princess said: 'Well, South America is good, there are so many skin diseases. But I met a doctor in New York, a very rich man, a friend of mine, who said nine-tenths of the babies in South America should be gassed; he said the bomb wouldn't do them the least harm; they should be exterminated. He toured South America and he was shocked. American science could do nothing for them. He is a splendid husband and father and he has seven children and knows what he is talking about.'
Lilia said: 'I think that is cruel.'
The Princess said: 'Oh, science is cruel; and this is a cruel age.'
December 5, 2015
Christina Stead was an Australian novelist and short-story writer acclaimed for her satirical wit and penetrating psychological characterizations. She was born in Sydney, Australia, and died in Sydney. However in between she spent the vast majority of her life outside Australia in Europe and, briefly, in America. Having left her homeland in 1928, she subsequently lived in London, Paris, Brussels, New York and Hollywood before returning to her country of origin in 1969. She experienced a nomadic lifestyle, moving restlessly from country to country. Never completely at home in London, her relationship with Australia was decidedly ambivalent. Prior to 1965, none of her novels were published in Australia and she was denied the Britannica Australia Award for Literature in 1967 on the grounds that her years abroad called into question her Australian citizenship. Only later in her career did she receive critical acclaim in her homeland.
Though championed by Saul Bellow, this is a minor novel among the oeuvre of Christina Stead. It is minor in the sense that it is only a third the size of her typical books - and simply because Stead usually excels at what appears to be a Rabelaisian approach to her narrative canvas. A tale that starts and ends was not one of her enduring interests, and here we have a few amusing vignettes, and a few less amusing ones, all set in the "Swiss-Touring Hotel", a nondescript, probably a touch shabby, little hotel a few years after the end of WWII.
Most of the occupants are elderly Europeans (the English commonly crop up) who are various shades of desperate or insane (in the humorous sense). The book is narrated by the 26 year-old woman who runs the hotel, and Stead proves to have a terrific ability to reproduce the voice of such a person; she finds a sort of Swiss-German English that's a little halting, a little too precise, and works like a charm. Stead's ability to juggle a number of story-lines at one time (there are dozens of characters in a novel running under 200 pages) is on full display here - as long as things are filtered through the young owner's perception. Past the halfway point in the book she (Stead) makes the strange decision to change to an omniscient narrator, smooth out the language, and to concentrate on one of the hotel's aging English guests and her relationship with a man who refuses to marry her and who may be simply out to procure her large fortune, along with periphery friends and associates of this character. The novel probably could not have been sustained through the original narrator's voice, simply recounting all the amusing incidents, and the choice to eventually bring a few characters up front and center is right; but Stead's way of doing it is jarring and the book never recovers either its momentum or interest. It shows the impact of probably having been two separate books that were put together to make one small novel.
Like Christina Stead's pre-war novels set in Europe, this one suggests the disintegration of European culture. It is a microcosm of Europe in ruins, with its pitiful characters on a lifeboat and not a spot of land or ship around. In a letter Stead once complained that she couldn't write "positive" characters. It was not her talent. Aside from the hotel owner few of the characters appear very pleasant, and even she is less a saint than a practical businesswomen. However, there are memorable characters like the "Mayor of B", a Belgian whose personal idiosyncrasies provide fodder for several scenes as when he gently harangues the staff. And a proper British woman, Mrs Trollope (even the name is quaintly literary) is also the focus of many episodes including a nostalgic moment:
"I invited Mrs Trollope to the movies. The film was Goodbye, Mr Chips and I was longing to see it. Mrs Trollope wanted to see it again. She said:
'It gives you such a feeling of the dear old world still being with us in the new; though the young seem so old nowadays.'" (p 54) Moments like this one make her perhaps the most sympathetic of the hotel's residents.
Stead had a special gift for both proper and reprehensible characters, sick, neurotic, or insane, . The joy of The Little Hotel lies in her little portraits.
"The Princess said: 'Well, South America is good, there are so many skin diseases. But I met a doctor in New York, a very rich man, a friend of mine, who said nine-tenths of the babies in South America should be gassed; he said the bomb wouldn't do them the least harm; they should be exterminated. He toured South America and he was shocked. American science could do nothing for them. He is a splendid husband and father and he has seven children and knows what he is talking about.'
Lilia said: 'I think that is cruel.'
The Princess said: 'Oh, science is cruel; and this is a cruel age.'"
Though championed by Saul Bellow, this is a minor novel among the oeuvre of Christina Stead. It is minor in the sense that it is only a third the size of her typical books - and simply because Stead usually excels at what appears to be a Rabelaisian approach to her narrative canvas. A tale that starts and ends was not one of her enduring interests, and here we have a few amusing vignettes, and a few less amusing ones, all set in the "Swiss-Touring Hotel", a nondescript, probably a touch shabby, little hotel a few years after the end of WWII.
Most of the occupants are elderly Europeans (the English commonly crop up) who are various shades of desperate or insane (in the humorous sense). The book is narrated by the 26 year-old woman who runs the hotel, and Stead proves to have a terrific ability to reproduce the voice of such a person; she finds a sort of Swiss-German English that's a little halting, a little too precise, and works like a charm. Stead's ability to juggle a number of story-lines at one time (there are dozens of characters in a novel running under 200 pages) is on full display here - as long as things are filtered through the young owner's perception. Past the halfway point in the book she (Stead) makes the strange decision to change to an omniscient narrator, smooth out the language, and to concentrate on one of the hotel's aging English guests and her relationship with a man who refuses to marry her and who may be simply out to procure her large fortune, along with periphery friends and associates of this character. The novel probably could not have been sustained through the original narrator's voice, simply recounting all the amusing incidents, and the choice to eventually bring a few characters up front and center is right; but Stead's way of doing it is jarring and the book never recovers either its momentum or interest. It shows the impact of probably having been two separate books that were put together to make one small novel.
Like Christina Stead's pre-war novels set in Europe, this one suggests the disintegration of European culture. It is a microcosm of Europe in ruins, with its pitiful characters on a lifeboat and not a spot of land or ship around. In a letter Stead once complained that she couldn't write "positive" characters. It was not her talent. Aside from the hotel owner few of the characters appear very pleasant, and even she is less a saint than a practical businesswomen. However, there are memorable characters like the "Mayor of B", a Belgian whose personal idiosyncrasies provide fodder for several scenes as when he gently harangues the staff. And a proper British woman, Mrs Trollope (even the name is quaintly literary) is also the focus of many episodes including a nostalgic moment:
"I invited Mrs Trollope to the movies. The film was Goodbye, Mr Chips and I was longing to see it. Mrs Trollope wanted to see it again. She said:
'It gives you such a feeling of the dear old world still being with us in the new; though the young seem so old nowadays.'" (p 54) Moments like this one make her perhaps the most sympathetic of the hotel's residents.
Stead had a special gift for both proper and reprehensible characters, sick, neurotic, or insane, . The joy of The Little Hotel lies in her little portraits.
"The Princess said: 'Well, South America is good, there are so many skin diseases. But I met a doctor in New York, a very rich man, a friend of mine, who said nine-tenths of the babies in South America should be gassed; he said the bomb wouldn't do them the least harm; they should be exterminated. He toured South America and he was shocked. American science could do nothing for them. He is a splendid husband and father and he has seven children and knows what he is talking about.'
Lilia said: 'I think that is cruel.'
The Princess said: 'Oh, science is cruel; and this is a cruel age.'"
September 6, 2017
What a gem this slim but darkly witty novella is -one of the best books I have read this year! The writing is so assured and daring. It starts with the distinctive first person voice of Mrs Bonnard, the owner of a cheap Swiss hotel, with a series of amusing (and at times appalling) stories about her bizarre and (in the words of the introduction to the Text Classic edition) 'magnificently dreadful' emigre guests.
It is the late 1940s and the cast of refugee aristocrat hotel residents live suspended in a state of genteel poverty and idle indecision with their fortunes locked up in the Bank of England, fretting over currency conversions and their uncertain futures. As well as being a satirical comedy of manners - Stead risks long scenes of dialogue that could be a theatre script - 'The Little Hotel' is rooted in politics, a critique of rentier capitalism and rapacious imperialism and their amoral, parasitic beneficiaries.
But there are victims here too: women trapped in openly cruel and loveless marriages (and a non-marriage in the case of Mrs Trollope) bereft of any meaningful work or purpose and barely sustained by medications (opium), shopping, gossip and their own fragile, snobbish self-esteem.
Some of these characters are floridly mad while others revel in an unapologetic toxic mix of 'old fashioned' racism and antisemitism (tinged with nostalgia for the 'good old days' of fascism) and the current post-war hatred and suspicion of Germans as well as Cold War phobia about Russian invasion and communist take-overs (oh, and the evil British Labour government). More ancient, habitual hatreds between the French, English, Italians and (Swiss-)Germans (played out in tensions within the long-suffering but calculating survivors of the hotel staff) thrive in the supposedly neutral haven of Switzerland, dashing any optimism about a new enlightened Europe.
Stead does not feel constrained by narrative conventions. The narrative voice boldly switches from first to third person, then back to first and then finally and at length back to third again. By novel's end Mrs Bonnard has become a bit player in a central story about the pathetic figures of Mrs Trollope and Madame Blaise (the original proposed title of the novel), two women who yearn for escape from this metaphorical prison.
In the hands of a lesser writer this structure would fall apart. The loose-knit first half (really a string of vignettes held together by the seductive no-nonsense voice of Mrs Bonnard) captures perfectly the hotel's airless atmosphere and its almost Beckettian timelessness, measured in slow seasonal cycles and neurotic daily rituals.
I was starting to go a little mad myself inside the heads of this sub-Chekovian cast of characters towards the end but overall Stead's dark humour and precise prose proved irresistibly entertaining. A must-read classic!
It is the late 1940s and the cast of refugee aristocrat hotel residents live suspended in a state of genteel poverty and idle indecision with their fortunes locked up in the Bank of England, fretting over currency conversions and their uncertain futures. As well as being a satirical comedy of manners - Stead risks long scenes of dialogue that could be a theatre script - 'The Little Hotel' is rooted in politics, a critique of rentier capitalism and rapacious imperialism and their amoral, parasitic beneficiaries.
But there are victims here too: women trapped in openly cruel and loveless marriages (and a non-marriage in the case of Mrs Trollope) bereft of any meaningful work or purpose and barely sustained by medications (opium), shopping, gossip and their own fragile, snobbish self-esteem.
Some of these characters are floridly mad while others revel in an unapologetic toxic mix of 'old fashioned' racism and antisemitism (tinged with nostalgia for the 'good old days' of fascism) and the current post-war hatred and suspicion of Germans as well as Cold War phobia about Russian invasion and communist take-overs (oh, and the evil British Labour government). More ancient, habitual hatreds between the French, English, Italians and (Swiss-)Germans (played out in tensions within the long-suffering but calculating survivors of the hotel staff) thrive in the supposedly neutral haven of Switzerland, dashing any optimism about a new enlightened Europe.
Stead does not feel constrained by narrative conventions. The narrative voice boldly switches from first to third person, then back to first and then finally and at length back to third again. By novel's end Mrs Bonnard has become a bit player in a central story about the pathetic figures of Mrs Trollope and Madame Blaise (the original proposed title of the novel), two women who yearn for escape from this metaphorical prison.
In the hands of a lesser writer this structure would fall apart. The loose-knit first half (really a string of vignettes held together by the seductive no-nonsense voice of Mrs Bonnard) captures perfectly the hotel's airless atmosphere and its almost Beckettian timelessness, measured in slow seasonal cycles and neurotic daily rituals.
I was starting to go a little mad myself inside the heads of this sub-Chekovian cast of characters towards the end but overall Stead's dark humour and precise prose proved irresistibly entertaining. A must-read classic!
April 14, 2021
This one was challenging, and interesting, but would require another read, I think, to crack its code. A group of many, servants and guests, inhabit a hotel, and the story is told, sort of, thought the eyes of the keeper, Mrs Bonnard. Fascinating for POV, but thin of plot, and hard for this reader to find the humor sometimes, though the pathos came right through the decades.
July 14, 2024
Not really my kind of book, this is a short social satire set after WWII in a cheap Swiss hotel. Interestingly it begins in first person, later switches to third and then goes back to first at the end. The characters are weak, sometimes pathetic, and there's no plot line - so not my cup of tea.
September 5, 2014
The small European hotel has ben used as a setting by a number of writers to create a multicultural microcosm: Anita Brookner did it in Hotel du Lac and so did Katherine Mansfield in In a German Pension. It used to be common for a certain class of people of independent means to stay abroad for long periods of time: to avoid paying tax; to avoid inclement winters; and sometimes because the impoverished genteel had financial embarrassments necessitating flight; or found it cheaper than maintaining a home to match their expectations.
The odd miscellany of characters in The Little Hotel have these reasons, and more.
Read the rest at http://anzlitlovers.wordpress.com/200... but beware, there are some spoilers.
The odd miscellany of characters in The Little Hotel have these reasons, and more.
Read the rest at http://anzlitlovers.wordpress.com/200... but beware, there are some spoilers.
November 19, 2018
I found this book interesting all the way through, but it never went anywhere. I paged forward after the end to see if there was an epilogue, but there wasn't. We just see a slice of this group of characters lives.
May 5, 2017
A strange one. Interesting to read after Dead Europe cos funnily enough it covered some of the same territory - just post WW2.
Set in Lausanne in a small pension style hotel, it's about an eclectic assortment of permanent or coming-and-going-and-coming residents from a variety of European backgrounds.
Sort of Hotel du Lac (Anita Brookner) territory, or Maggie Smith and Judi Dench ...
Nothing really happens. They whinge about each other, reveal themselves and their prejudices, racisms and absurdities as they eat the horrible meals, interact with the hotel staff or strolll around the lake.
I read one academic feminist analysis which sees Stead as having created synecdoches (yes, I had to look it up!) wherein each character represents a social, economic, financial, political position of post-war Europe, and noone was very nice. There was no Eleanor Roosevelt trying to intelligently steer up a United Nations though!
Stead was a Marxist & she had also lived in Europe and elsewhere following men who didn't really appreciate her and took her for granted, like the only really sympathetic character in the book Mrs Trollope.
I dunno about this. I don't think I have the patience or inclination to unravel its greater meanings, if there are any. Maybe it was a product of its times in that sense (tho it's late Stead - first published 1973)
I did really enjoy the wry and ironic tone, which reminded me in places of Trollope's masterpiece The Barchester Chronicles - though noone approached the odious ess of Obadiah Slope (RIP Alan Rickman). Is that why Mrs Trollope was named thus?
There were flashes of Jane Austenesque social satire as well.
There is a series of grotesques who are very funny.
So for all that, and forget the synecdoches, I give it 3.5 stars!
Set in Lausanne in a small pension style hotel, it's about an eclectic assortment of permanent or coming-and-going-and-coming residents from a variety of European backgrounds.
Sort of Hotel du Lac (Anita Brookner) territory, or Maggie Smith and Judi Dench ...
Nothing really happens. They whinge about each other, reveal themselves and their prejudices, racisms and absurdities as they eat the horrible meals, interact with the hotel staff or strolll around the lake.
I read one academic feminist analysis which sees Stead as having created synecdoches (yes, I had to look it up!) wherein each character represents a social, economic, financial, political position of post-war Europe, and noone was very nice. There was no Eleanor Roosevelt trying to intelligently steer up a United Nations though!
Stead was a Marxist & she had also lived in Europe and elsewhere following men who didn't really appreciate her and took her for granted, like the only really sympathetic character in the book Mrs Trollope.
I dunno about this. I don't think I have the patience or inclination to unravel its greater meanings, if there are any. Maybe it was a product of its times in that sense (tho it's late Stead - first published 1973)
I did really enjoy the wry and ironic tone, which reminded me in places of Trollope's masterpiece The Barchester Chronicles - though noone approached the odious ess of Obadiah Slope (RIP Alan Rickman). Is that why Mrs Trollope was named thus?
There were flashes of Jane Austenesque social satire as well.
There is a series of grotesques who are very funny.
So for all that, and forget the synecdoches, I give it 3.5 stars!
April 16, 2021
Christina Stead wrote The Little Hotel over a number of years, during which her views changed and hardened - as we can see. The story is set just after the Second World War, when a multinational set of guests make their home in a “fourth class” Swiss hotel by Lake Geneva.
There seem a number of psychological messages (beliefs) that Christina Stead builds into this novel. The guests cannot escape each other. They are like people sealed in a pandemic pod. This satirical account is of various individual stories colliding in the hotel. Mrs. Trollope's relentless quest for her "cousin" Mr. Wilkins to marry her, speaks to the theme of the marriage game under late capitalism. The satire attacks the greed, hypocrisy and chicanery of modern life. Neither the author nor narrator provide a moral commentary or make judgements, in what is a damning social analysis. A comedy of manners turns into satire. Christina seems skeptical of marriage - locks people down and their natural instinct is to have multple partners. The individuals clashing are stereotypes - and their behaviors exaggerated to create the humor that doubles as brutal satire.
The Little Hotel is a liminal space as the guests leave with status different from when they arrived. Through the interactions among guests we see the transitions.
I deducted one star because I felt the novel was slow in its early stages, and I benchmark against the literary canon. Christina carved her own niche in a relatively neglected genre - satire - and there are elements of realism, modernism, and postmodernism in this novel.
The novel packs in several dark truths about the prejudices that immobilized postwar Europe and continue to immobilize in our present era.
Finally, I read the Text Classics edition of this book, published in 2017 (209 pp.).
There seem a number of psychological messages (beliefs) that Christina Stead builds into this novel. The guests cannot escape each other. They are like people sealed in a pandemic pod. This satirical account is of various individual stories colliding in the hotel. Mrs. Trollope's relentless quest for her "cousin" Mr. Wilkins to marry her, speaks to the theme of the marriage game under late capitalism. The satire attacks the greed, hypocrisy and chicanery of modern life. Neither the author nor narrator provide a moral commentary or make judgements, in what is a damning social analysis. A comedy of manners turns into satire. Christina seems skeptical of marriage - locks people down and their natural instinct is to have multple partners. The individuals clashing are stereotypes - and their behaviors exaggerated to create the humor that doubles as brutal satire.
The Little Hotel is a liminal space as the guests leave with status different from when they arrived. Through the interactions among guests we see the transitions.
I deducted one star because I felt the novel was slow in its early stages, and I benchmark against the literary canon. Christina carved her own niche in a relatively neglected genre - satire - and there are elements of realism, modernism, and postmodernism in this novel.
The novel packs in several dark truths about the prejudices that immobilized postwar Europe and continue to immobilize in our present era.
Finally, I read the Text Classics edition of this book, published in 2017 (209 pp.).
March 11, 2023
Set in a Swiss hotel in a time shortly after the Second World War, the novel is told as a series of chaotic conversations between the various eccentric guests of the hotel—a Belgian mayor in self-exile, a listless princess, an imperious doctor, an extravagant divorcee, a cantankerous admiral. The guests trade salacious gossip, spy on the foibles of those around them, and bicker and squabble relentlessly. The mayor issues his orders to the hotel staff through a series of documents delivered by underlings; a divorcee is unable to travel because she will lose on the exchange rates. None of them are living decadent lives of luxury; they are trapped there by political and financial exigencies. And yet they are all obliviously wealthy, morbidly curious and snobbishly haughty. In one conversation, a couple dines with a doctor and his wife, passing around photographs of grizzly skin infections with dispassionate fascination; a woman describes how she sent her son to a ranch so that he would not marry, "I prefer him to love men and on ranches I heard there are plenty of fancy boots. So I made him go; and once he is corrupted he will never go back; he may marry but he will hate and torture the bitch"; shortly afterwards, the princess recommends that everyone move to Argentina because "Your money is safe with a dictator. He keeps the greedy people down, those who want to nationalize everything and take what isn't their to take". The residents regard the horrors of fascism and war with bemused disinterest.
It's a biting satire but it was hard to get into—a plotless series of meandering conversations, melodramatic tiffs, and bloviating tirades, silly rich people with nothing to do.
It's a biting satire but it was hard to get into—a plotless series of meandering conversations, melodramatic tiffs, and bloviating tirades, silly rich people with nothing to do.
January 21, 2023
Interesting but technically clumsy and rather depressing. Although the book isn't divided into sections, it starts and ends from the point of view Madame Bonnard, the owner of a respectable but threadbare hotel in the Lausanne area. However, a great chunk of it in the middle is told from the point of view of an omniscient narrator. The period is the 1950s. Madame Bonnard is a 26 year old woman, wise beyond her years, and with a gift for taking people on their own terms without being hoodwinked by them. As long as guests pay their bills and servants don't take too many liberties, she'll play along with just about anybody. Early scenes revolve around the Mayor of B., a Belgian eccentric with a passion for champagne and an equally passionate hatred of Germans. Later the novel concentrates on the plight of Mrs Trollope, a Eurasian divorcée who comes to the painful realization that her lover Robert Wilkins will never marry her, and will quite possibly leave her destitute. Mrs Trollope is the kindest character in the whole book, which is mostly peopled by vicious, selfish and at bottom deeply unhappy frauds. For want of true friends, Mrs Trollope confides in Madame Blaise, a wealthy woman from Basel whose marriage to a weird doctor is a hell all of its own. Monsieur and Madame Blaise seem to hate each other, yet act in cahoots to make fools of Wilkins and Mrs Trollope whom they despise as their social and/or racial inferiors. Not the best satirical novel of its kind, but entertaining and shrewd enough.
June 8, 2017
Enjoyable and structurally interesting, though ultimately slight. Stead let this one sit for some time before finishing it off and getting it published, and it shows. The book was initially called 'Mrs Trollope and Madame Blaise,' which is far more accurate and representative of the last two thirds than 'The Little Hotel,' which is a great title for the first part of the book. As this suggests, there's a pretty big technical problem: Stead spends a long time enjoying herself with the various guests of the eponymous hotel, and then gets on to the focus of her story, Mrs Trollope and post-war currency export restrictions. No, I am not joking.
So the first part is a bit of allegory, as poor guests of various nationalities do idiotic things; it is great fun and wonderfully written from the perspective of the hotel keeper. The rest is told more neutrally, and reminds me of Compton-Burnett or Elizabeth Jolley (much as I hate to compare it only to other women, I just haven't read men who do this style so well): kind of abstracted, but quite detailed at the same time. And it's allegorical, too, but more involved in money questions. Christina Stead is awesome; in other hands, this would have been a mess. Instead, it's fun and interesting.
So the first part is a bit of allegory, as poor guests of various nationalities do idiotic things; it is great fun and wonderfully written from the perspective of the hotel keeper. The rest is told more neutrally, and reminds me of Compton-Burnett or Elizabeth Jolley (much as I hate to compare it only to other women, I just haven't read men who do this style so well): kind of abstracted, but quite detailed at the same time. And it's allegorical, too, but more involved in money questions. Christina Stead is awesome; in other hands, this would have been a mess. Instead, it's fun and interesting.
May 15, 2021
Very disappointing read. The Center of Fiction, in Brooklyn, NY sponsored a virtual reading group on the book. A wonderful place, yet not a good selection.
In "The Little Hotel" characters are the plot, yet are shallow - both in development and in their demeanor. The hotel takes a backseat or are support to the hotelier and the guests. Spending time with unappealing individuals does not bode well for a good or interesting read. Frustrating circumstances of the characters' lives also contribute towards the displeasurable read. Ms. Stead drips clues into the real character of the characters, also leading to a shallow read.
The author, known for her magnus opus "The Man Who Loved Children" fell short in the writing of "The Little Hotel". Clever switching of perspective, first, third, etc. does nothing for the story or the reader, other than demonstrate the writer's gymnastic capabilities.
Some books survive and even thrive with time, I don't see how this one does unfortunately.
In "The Little Hotel" characters are the plot, yet are shallow - both in development and in their demeanor. The hotel takes a backseat or are support to the hotelier and the guests. Spending time with unappealing individuals does not bode well for a good or interesting read. Frustrating circumstances of the characters' lives also contribute towards the displeasurable read. Ms. Stead drips clues into the real character of the characters, also leading to a shallow read.
The author, known for her magnus opus "The Man Who Loved Children" fell short in the writing of "The Little Hotel". Clever switching of perspective, first, third, etc. does nothing for the story or the reader, other than demonstrate the writer's gymnastic capabilities.
Some books survive and even thrive with time, I don't see how this one does unfortunately.
May 1, 2023
This is a wacky little read about a group of wacky people from various nations that find themselves in a small French-Swiss hotel overlooking Lake Geneva. They are observed by the proprietor/narrator, who is much younger than the guests she chronicles. It deserves, perhaps, more than three stars for being quite clever in its conception and depiction of some very strange characters; but the plot is a bit elusive and the reading suffers from a lack of structure. This latter, I quite readily confess, may be the product of its vintage and nation-of-origin; I'm not an expert in writing Australian fiction-writing from the mid-twentieth century. However, I wished for a little more as the book moves from one to another guest, glued together by two "cousins" (actually would-be spouses) each engaged in his/her own agenda to the detriment of the relationship. There is a good bit of humor, much of it "visual", but I found I wasn't eager to get back to it; it just didn't pull me in.
April 5, 2021
Less a novel than a portrait. It is an often laugh out loud satirical look at mid 20th century European culture. A group of expatriots on prolonged sojourns in a small Swiss hotel all seem to have more than clothing in their baggage. Love affairs, financial misdeeds, family issues, political issues and more affect them all. It is all observed by Mme Bonnard, the proprietress in a very detached, dryly humorous way. The narration ranges from first person to third person in a strange kind of way.
I enjoyed the book but couldn’t love it simply because it just isn’t my cup of tea. I suspect it was influential since it bears a close resemblance to ‘Hotel du Lac’ by Anita Brookner which won the Booker and to Wes Anderson’s ‘Hotel Budapest’ and probably several other works.
To fans of those works, this would likely appeal.
I enjoyed the book but couldn’t love it simply because it just isn’t my cup of tea. I suspect it was influential since it bears a close resemblance to ‘Hotel du Lac’ by Anita Brookner which won the Booker and to Wes Anderson’s ‘Hotel Budapest’ and probably several other works.
To fans of those works, this would likely appeal.
July 1, 2021
Libro ambientato in un piccolo hotel della Svizzera francese alla fine del secondo conflitto mondiale. Attraverso la narrazione della proprietaria dell'hotel conosciamo i vari ospiti - quasi tutti appartenenti all'alta società che hanno deciso di risiedere all'estero per vantaggi economici - e le loro meschine storie. E difatti l'interesse principale di quasi tutti è mantenere il proprio gruzzolo, cercare il cambio migliore, e spendere il meno possibile, il tutto tra un aperitivo e una cena. I personaggi sono uno più miserabile dell'altro.
Non ho apprezzato lo stile: non ho trovato ironia o una penna tagliente, ma una scrittura poco chiara e convincente. Sono stata tentata più volte, vinta dalla noia, di interromperlo, ma alla fine la storia dei due “cugini” mi ha intrigato, e difatti la signora Trollope è l'unica dotata di sentimenti e degna di nota del romanzo.
Non ho apprezzato lo stile: non ho trovato ironia o una penna tagliente, ma una scrittura poco chiara e convincente. Sono stata tentata più volte, vinta dalla noia, di interromperlo, ma alla fine la storia dei due “cugini” mi ha intrigato, e difatti la signora Trollope è l'unica dotata di sentimenti e degna di nota del romanzo.
November 18, 2023
“Bir otelde her gün neler yaşandığını bir bilseniz!” sözüyle başlayan roman İsviçre’de benzerlerinden ucuz olmasıyla bilinen ve görece maddi durumu daha kötü olan insanların kaldığı veya mecburiyetten uğradığı bir otel olan İsviçre-Turu Oteli’nin misafirleri ve onlar ile otel personelinin sorunlarından bahsediyor. Kozmopolitliğiyle bilinen İsviçre’de faaliyet göstermesi sebebiyle personeli de çeşitli ülkelerden gelmekte ve otel sahipleri bir şekilde onların misafirlerle ve kendi aralarındaki iletişimlerini de sağlamak zorunda. Hem personel hem misafirler noktasında kimi kendini üstün gören, kimi hayaller gören, kimi hayatının son günlerini huzur içinde yaşamak isteyen bu insanlar hep bir arada bir şekilde günlerini geçiriyor.
October 4, 2017
The setting is a little hotel where all kinds of things are happening. Who knew so much went on at a place like that? It sort of reminds me of the library. People come and go but there is a crew who stays the whole time. The young proprietress is working hard with her husband to keep the place running, dealing with staff, guest and all the crazy things that go along with the human condition. This is just one long chapter about a time period in the hotel and all that happens. It is so much fun to read and I think I enjoyed every page.
August 8, 2018
The little hotel by Stead_ Christina
Story follows many who have stayed at the little hotel-in Switerzerland.
Seems to me they gossiped a lot about the guests among the owner and the maids.
Like they don't have enough to do with their work. Stories of women taken advantage of because of all the money they have.
I received this book from National Library Service for my BARD (Braille Audio Reading Device).
Story follows many who have stayed at the little hotel-in Switerzerland.
Seems to me they gossiped a lot about the guests among the owner and the maids.
Like they don't have enough to do with their work. Stories of women taken advantage of because of all the money they have.
I received this book from National Library Service for my BARD (Braille Audio Reading Device).
July 2, 2020
I liked this book, but in the end, it felt unfulfilling, like what was the point? I enjoyed the beginning with the different little stories of people in the hotel. I enjoyed Mrs. Trollope's story just as much, but the two parts felt just too disconnected to be in the same book. I also wish we knew what happened to her and the other characters. Overall: short, entertaining, but missing something.
June 28, 2017
At 148 pages it shouldn't have taken me nearly as long as it did to read this book. I kept picking it up and down, but couldn't get into it. Written as a farce, it should have been humorous; I guess I failed to see it.
March 22, 2021
Comic novel about Switzerland right after the end of World War II. I have no idea where I read about it or what prompted me to reserve it from the library but here we are. I like the conceit of an omniscient hotel owner narrating because it implies that she's spying outside every room.
April 13, 2021
Weird, chilling, funny. Going to read more f this author.
June 21, 2022
3.5/5 stars
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