The Grass Hotel

by Craig Sherborne

Carry me, son. Do not leave me behind.
Are you listening to me?
Of course you’re listening, you say, and add the F-word. Off you go to cope with a storm. Lucerne armfuls for horses. For cows, plain hay.

Alone in the paddocks of his grass hotel a man tends to his beloved horses, Socks and Boy. The voice of his mother—accusatory, fragmenting from dementia—haunts his every move, an excoriating reminder of his failures in the world of people.

The Grass Hotel is a story of damage and repair, of familial obligation and the resentments it can cause. It is also about the profound comfort that a connection with animals can offer.

With its extraordinary use of language, Craig Sherborne’s novel is by turns savage and tender, raw and a small masterpiece.

Craig Sherborne’s memoir Hoi Polloi was shortlisted for the Queensland and Victorian Premier’s Literary Awards. The follow-up, Muck, won the Queensland Literary Award for Non-fiction. Sherborne’s debut novel, The Amateur Science of Love, won the Best Writing Prize in the 2012 Melbourne Prize for Literature and was shortlisted for the NSW and Victorian Premiers’ Awards. He has also written two volumes of poetry, and his journalism and poetry have appeared in most of Australia’s leading literary journals and anthologies. His two most recent novels are Tree Palace, shortlisted for the Miles Franklin Literary Award, and Off the Record.

Genres: Fiction

148 pages, Kindle Edition

Published February 1, 2022

About the author

Craig Sherborne, a Melbourne based poet and playwright, was educated at Scots College in Sydney before attending drama school in London. He worked as a journalist for Melbourne based newspapers, was a senior writer with the Melbourne Sun, and is published in literary journals and anthologies.

Sherborne's play, 'The Ones Out of Town', won the Wal Cherry Play of the Year Award in 1989. His radio play, 'Table Leg', won the Ian Reed Foundation Fellowship for new writing for radio in 1991.

The ABC commissioned work from him including 'The Pike Harvest' (1992). His verse-drama, Look at Everything Twice for Me, was published by Currency Press, his first volume of poetry, Bullion, by Penguin in 1995, and his second, Necessary Evil, by Black Inc. in 2005.

Craig Sherborne's memoir Hoi Polloi was published in 2005; it was shortlisted for the Queensland Premier’s and Victorian Premier’s Literary Awards.. Its sequel, Muck, was published in 2007 and won the Queensland Literary Award for Non-Fiction in 2008.

Craig’s first novel, The Amateur Science of Love, won the Melbourne Prize for Literature’s Best Writing Award, and was shortlisted for a Victorian Premier’s Literary Award and a NSW Premier’s Literary Award.

Reviews

[Neale · Rating 5 out of 5]

My review is published in the April edition of goodREADING magazine.

A wonderful book. :-)

[Text Publishing]

The following reviews have been shared by Text Publishing - publisher of The Grass Hotel

‘Pays homage to the body in all its vulnerabilities…The Grass Hotel is an unsparing but humane portrait of a mother and son.’
Books+Publishing

'Short and sharp, savage yet tender, and written with a poet's touch -a bittersweet portrait of mother and son by an award-winning Australian novelist.’
North Melbourne Books Newsletter

‘The novel’s poetic, image-rich, disjointed realm is immersive and memorable…The Grass Hotel leaves us with a persuasive articulation of familial power dynamics, their emotional turbulence.’
Guardian

'[Craig Sherborne] writes simple sentences full of emotional power…This [is a] soul-searching novel, in which long-suppressed memories are hinted at and then slowly released.’
Stephen Romei, Saturday Paper

'At every turn the book’s natural lyricism and gentle melancholy rub against [a] darker mood—resentment, disappointment, all the unsettled scores of parent and child, even after death...At every turn the prose is taut, fractured and imagistic—a sustained act of broken beauty over 200 pages…[Sherborne] has used fiction and imagination to raise the contemptuous cliche of a common life to the highest fury and power…What matters more than the mere actual of personal history is the summoned force of art, and it’s here where the book’s power lies. It is genuinely haunted, and haunts in turn.’
Adam Rivett, Age/SMH

‘Sherborne does an incredible job with the mother’s narration...Brilliantly written.’
Good Reading

‘[A] remarkable feat of wordsmithing…It’s a version of a black and terrible joke that the person who has lost correct and coherent language is written by someone who is something of a word magician...The Grass Hotel stands alone as a virtuosic deferral of self-examination by delivering an often cruel version of a woman who has lost her mind.’
Australian Book Review

'[The Grass Hotel] shows off Sherborne’s considerable experience as both a poet and playwright.’
Big Issue

‘Told in a sometimes comic, sometimes abrasive wild poetry.’
Advertiser

[Jodi]

DNF'd @ 25% - This protagonist couldn't connect with people—not even his own parents. He had a gift with animals, though, particularly horses. I wasn't able to connect with him OR his story. The Grass Hotel is quite an odd little book; oddly written, too. At 25%, I regrettably decided to move on. It's a shame. Must be the only animal-centric book I've ever bailed on.

[Carolyn · Rating 4 out of 5]

I had to start this twice at the beginning as I wasn’t fully focused when I first started.

So glad I did as I would of lost the heart of the story.

It’s a heart reaching story of an adult son, his mother with early progressing dementia and the father

All through this book I kept thinking of all the people who are in this role now and there are many

Nothing in life can prepare us really for when we reach this particular life event, there are guidelines but once you’re thrust into it you soon realise those guidelines are very meek

There is a lot to take in with this story and I am not sure if it’s part autobiography, I would lean to yes

Thank goodness for the storyline of the horses it’s a wonderful and significant part of this tale

[Lisa]

I was expecting to like this. I haven't read Sherborne's highly acclaimed memoirs but I've enjoyed his fiction greatly. (See anzlitlovers.com/2018/03/17/off-the-r... and anzlitlovers.com/2011/08/19/the-amate...).
It's not that the topic put me off, I've been able to negotiate the scattered thoughts of someone with dementia in fiction before. It's the savagery of it, it's the nastiness. I know some people do get nasty with dementia, but (apologies if I've got it wrong) this feels like a brutal payback for a lifetime of nastiness.
And I'm just not in the mood for reading the nasty thoughts of a nasty old woman right now.
I don't rate books I don't finish.
PS See The Guardian for the review that encouraged me to reserve the book at the library: theguardian.com/books/2022/feb/11/the...

[Yva · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5 stars, but rounded it up to 4 because it had horses.

All horse-related poetry read beautifully and made me envision and remember things. I think at one point I could've closed my eyes and felt the rhythm of a slow canter and condensed power of the horse, if I'd really tried.

The start was hard to get into. I was deeply disappointed to be reading that the 'character' was already deceased. But, as we went back in time, the book grew on me. Because however unique everyone's family, history and experiences are, there were many things that were recognisable, if one has had their own experiences with close ones with dementia.

[Gavan · Rating 2 out of 5]

I really wanted to like this book more than I did as I've loved the author's previous novels. Written in a cross between poetry & prose, I found it very difficult to engage with the characters & events as it was too opaque. While individual sentences and paras are beautifully written it became hard work to attempt to follow the (albeit limited) narrative. I suspect from reading several media reviews that others will get much more from this book than me.

[Winter Kuhaupt · Rating 2 out of 5]

I really wanted to like this, but the writing was so hard to engage with 🫠