‘Some money is thinner than other money is’: 'Hotel World' by Ali Smith – Book Recommendation

A hotel, for most people, is a transitory place, somewhere where lives interconnect briefly before going their separate ways. In Ali Smith’s novel, the paths of five very different females cross as they pass through the doors of a branch of the Global Hotel chain. Smith uses their experiences to explore themes including love, family, physical and mental breakdown, life and death, and perhaps most pointedly of all, social inequality. As the novel points out, hotels can press those with more modest means ‘right up against the window of other people’s wealth’. In Hotel World, we encounter the humble and the entitled, the empathic and the selfish, the affluent and the impoverished, but we also meet some people who have love in their lives and others who do not. The emotionally bankrupt rub shoulders with those who are rich in compassion and kindness. There is a lot here about insecurity, loneliness, and anonymity, all of which seem, ironically, to be fairly universal. The sense of something lacking, of deficiency, of miscommunication and misunderstanding is highlighted by Smith’s use of elliptical and distorted language. However, the gaps are filled and shortcomings countered by hope, by courage, and by love. Also notable, given the ephemeral character of hotels, is the recurrent allusion to time throughout the novel, which highlights the relative nature of experience. It’s all about life, really. Filled with life. All the world’s a hotel, and all the men and women merely stayers.

Hotel World by Ali Smith ISBN: 9780140296792