Women's Hotel
A Novel
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3.2 • 6 Ratings
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- $1.99
Publisher Description
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 (modeled 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. This cosmopolitan comedy is as undeniable as it is stylishly understated.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Lavery's appealingly offbeat debut novel (after the memoir Something That May Shock and Discredit You) explores the importance of a women's hotel in the lives of its residents. As the story opens in 1960s New York City, breakfast at the Biedermeier, which was developed in the 1930s as a temporary residence for the burgeoning "office-girl generation," has been discontinued, much to the displeasure of its residents. Katherine Heap, a longtime resident who's since joined the staff as first-floor director, promises to pass along their complaints. Katherine's backstory reveals the roots of her devotion to the Biedermeier, showing how as a 22-year-old recent transplant from Ohio, she found a new community and the strength to stay sober. Among the other residents are Lucianne Caruso, whose romantic and professional ups and downs Lavery chronicles to sympathetic effect; journalist Pauline Carter, who carries the flame of her Upper Manhattan family's devotion to anarchism; Carol Lipscomb, a classics student who forms a makeshift art collective; and telephone operator Kitty Milham. There's not much of a plot, but there are plenty of dramatic and consequential episodes, such as Katherine's ill-fated attempt to help Kitty by impersonating her for a scheduled court appearance. Lavery colorfully captures the hotel in the last glimmers of its heyday and brings the misfit residents to life. Patient readers will find much to savor.
