Women's Hotel
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4.0 • 1 Rating
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- $25.99
Publisher Description
National Bestseller
ONE OF FALL'S MOST ANTICIPATED READS—New York Times, Vulture, BookPage, Kirkus Reviews, and more
From the New York Times bestselling author and advice columnist, a poignant and funny debut novel about the residents of a women’s hotel in 1960s New York City.
The Biedermeier might be several rungs lower on the ladder than the real-life Barbizon, but its residents manage to occupy one another nonetheless. There’s Katherine, the first-floor manager, lightly cynical and more than lightly suggestible. There’s Lucianne, a workshy party girl caught between the love of comfort and an instinctive bridling at convention, Kitty the sponger, Ruth the failed hairdresser, and Pauline the typesetter. And there’s Stephen, the daytime elevator operator and part-time Cooper Union student.
The residents give up breakfast, juggle competing jobs at rival presses, abandon their children, get laid off from the telephone company, attempt to retrain as stenographers, all with the shared awareness that their days as an institution are numbered, and they’d better make the most of it while it lasts.
As trenchant as the novels of Dawn Powell and Rona Jaffe and as immersive as The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel and Lessons in Chemistry, Women’s Hotel is a modern classic—and it is very, very funny.
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
Daniel Lavery’s hilarious social satire tracks the lives of a group of quirky women making their way in 1960s New York City. The fictional Biedermeier (modelled after Manhattan’s legendary Barbizon) is a Mad Men–era residential hotel for women. Unfortunately for both occupants and staff, it’s gradually becoming obsolete, and its downturn is starting to show. (When the hotel kitchen stops providing free breakfast, it hits the residents hard.) And that’s only the start of what these models, actors, art students, magazine editors, and others deal with just to get through the day. Lavery tells their tales through vivid vignettes loaded with bone-dry wit, making it feel like fodder for a period sitcom directed by Wes Anderson. Fittingly, narrator Mara Wilson’s gift for droll delivery is just what the desk clerk ordered. This cosmopolitan comedy is as undeniable as it is stylishly understated.
