Hotel de Dream

by Emma Tennant

Hardcover. First edition. Jacket price-clipped, with slightly sunned spine; spine ends a little bumped. Page block is slightly foxed. All text is clear, and pages are clean and sound. TS

Genres: Fantasy, Fiction

160 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1976

About the author

Since the early 1970s, when she was in her mid-thirties, Emma Tennant has been a prolific novelist and has established herself as one of the leading British exponents of "new fiction." This does not mean that she is an imitator of either the French nouveaux romanciers or the American post-modernists, although her work reveals an indebtedness to the methods and preoccupations of some of the latter. Like them, she employs parody and rewriting, is interested in the fictiveness of fiction, appropriates some science-fiction conventions, and exploits the possibilities of generic dislocation and mutation, especially the blending of realism and fantasy. Yet, although parallels can be cited and influences suggested, her work is strongly individual, the product of an intensely personal, even idiosyncratic, attempt to create an original type of highly imaginative fiction.

Reviews

[Nate D · Rating 3 out of 5]

Emma Tennant wrote scads of short novels occupying some part of the fantastic-surreal-oneiric spectrum in the 70s and into the 80s, which all obviously look completely essential, particularly with their period cover designs, which I obviously need to read all of (could this pick up some slack from my having run through most of Angela Carter's key works by now?), and once I've actually got my hands on them, they turn out to be... well... sort of unremarkable. Granted, conceptually this is great: the tenants of a dreary boarding house escape into their personal dreamworlds, only to have them start to run together and pollute eachother and their waking hours, as well as modifying and being modified by the attempts of not one but two revising writers in the vicinity. Lots of great metatextual possibilities, potential for some really weird and startingly scenes, and all that goes with the collective unconscious this is diving into. Which, again, is very enticing -- I would say "on paper" except of course it's on paper here, it seems to have been getting it out of concept and onto paper that posed the problem -- but in the end it turns out to be a collection of the most middling dream experiences imaginable, actually basically rational, even predictable, and OH BRITAIN, ARE YOUR SUBCONSCIOUS URGES POSSIBLY THIS BORING? largely revolving around meeting the Queen. And the plot and characters are largely devoid of sympathy or intrigue.

It's not all bad at all, quite brisk, still some nice weird moments, generally enjoyable, but I can't believe the wasted potential here. Seriously, dreaming Britain, the Queen? I'll assume you've been sold short by Tennant here.

[ClareT · Rating 2 out of 5]

I picked this up for 1976 week having seen it on Neglected Book's Twitter Feed. I think that another reviewer had it spot on when they said it is an unremarkable book.
The Westringham Hotel, a run down boarding house with long term residents, is run by the widowed Mrs Routledge, with help from Cridge, a sort of butler, who lives in the basement and empties the pots he uses for toilets once a week, and generally seems to serve the food. The residents include Mr Poytner, Miss Biggs, Miss Scranton, a school teacher who doesn't seem to leave the Hotel, and newly arrived author, Mrs Houghton.
They seem to spend their time either sleeping and dreaming, or drinking tea. Their dreams are fairly stereotypical, reflecting what they wish their lives could be, Mr Poytner is governor of a country that resembles all that he admires of England - rolling countryside, blossom, large white houses and subservient citizens, Miss Scranton dreams of belonging to a tribe of Amazon Women, Miss Biggs spends her time at garden parties advising the queen. But, their dreams start to merge with each other and with reality.
The book does get a bit repetitive, and became a bit laborious to read. There are some humorous bits in it, and the idea of Mrs Houghton's characters in her book wanting to get away because they otherwise fear they will be doomed to be together forever in domestic not quite bliss in Dorset is more than they can bear was quite fun.
The ending does go over the top, the writing is not very engaging, none of the characters, with the exception perhaps of the characters from Mrs Houghton's book, are particularly nice.
I wavered up to 2.5 stars, but have settled on 2 as it is a bit meh, and almost became a dnf, thankfully it was only 190 pages.

[Ashley Lambert-Maberly · Rating 4 out of 5]

A nice fast read, highly entertaining, but not very moving--at all--which I kind of require to give five stars unless it is the Best Thing Ever (e.g. Joe Keenan's Blue Heaven, consistently hilarious and not remotely touching).

It managed the neat trick of being almost entirely composed of dreams, which, let's face it, are the dullest part of any novel--but because the point of it was the dreams, and the dreams intersected and collided and changed the other dreams, it became very interesting indeed.

Felt more like surrealism (e.g. Carrington's The Hearing Trumpet) than fantasy par usual ... there was no explanation for why any of this would be happening, it just was.

Nicely written, unusual, and brisk.

[Hannah]

DNF

[Natalie · Rating 3 out of 5]

Ultimately too repetitive for me, and though it's dreamy it is a dreamscape that evokes picasso's Guernica and the unsavory side of the human psyche, revolution, poverty and the imagination as much as the euphoric side.

[Just_ann_now · Rating 2 out of 5]

An odd, slightly disturbing, and, I think, ultimately very memorable novel. In some ways it reminded me of Cloud Atlas, though in this book it is overt, and not merely implied, how the characters' stories begin to merge together.

A synopsis: let me try. A group of impoverished souls live together in a decrepit London boardinghouse (glorified with the name "Hotel Westringham"). Each of them seems so lost in utter misery and depression that they continually seek to escape into sleep. This becomes their undoing as their dreams begin to merge together, with little rhyme or reason, but with such vividness that it becomes increasingly unclear what is dream and what is reality.

The writing is richly and sometimes horrifyingly vivid. The events of the novel seem to make little sense (as dreams make little sense, too). The whole thing had a sort of train-wreck quality: I just couldn't stop reading.

To be completely honest, I bought this because 1) it qualified for the challenge, and 2) it was $1.99 on the Kindle. Overall, I would say this slender novel is certainly worth a look.

[D-day · Rating 2 out of 5]

Well written, but the plot (such as it is) meanders. Not quite my cup of tea