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A review by jennyshank
A Small Hotel by Robert Olen Butler
3.0
http://www.dallasnews.com/entertainment/books/20110826-book-review-a-small-hotel-by-robert-olen-butler.ece
The author, known for his risk-taking, offers a quiet but well-executed story about a disintigrating marriage
FICTION
A Small Hotel
Robert Olen Butler
(Grove, $24)
Some of literature's greatest plots would have been ruined by modern technology. Take Romeo and Juliet — if those lovesick teenagers had been able to text each other, there would have been no mix-ups over who was dead and who wasn't. And what if Jane Eyre could have gone online to learn that Mr. Rochester was already “in a relationship”?
But in his new, melancholy novel, A Small Hotel, Robert Olen Butler considers the difficulties that one couple has in understanding each other, despite all the contemporary communication devices at their disposal. Michael and Kelly Hays, who are in the process of a divorce, call each other's cellphones incessantly, but can't seem to express their true feelings to each other.
The present action of A Small Hotel takes place over the course of one eventful day, when Kelly is supposed to finalize her divorce from Michael at a judge's chambers in Pensacola, Fla. Instead, she heads to the Olivier House hotel in the New Orleans French Quarter, where she and Michael spent their first night together 25 years earlier, and have been visiting ever since. She packs light, bringing just a few clothes, a bottle of Scotch, and enough Percocet to send a horse to his maker. She is woefully sad. , and in an introspective frame of mind.
Meanwhile, her soon-to-be-ex husband Michael, a successful lawyer, is off with new squeeze Laurie, a woman “young enough to be his daughter,” at a party at an old plantation where everyone must wear antebellum costumes ala Scarlett O'Hara. This isn't Michael's sort of thing—he's hit with a “niggling unease at showing himself in public in costume.” He puts up with it because Laurie wants him to, but he's preoccupied with memories of Kelly.
Given this set-up, it will seem clear who was the victim and who the victimized in Michael and Kelly's relationship, but through layers of flashbacks that build toward the crisis point in their marriage, Butler will gradually upend initial perceptions.
A Small Hotel drifts from past to present, alternating between Kelly's and Michael's perspective as each relives the key moments of their marriage, from their remarkable meeting during Mardi Gras to the birth of their daughter to each character's childhood, which reveals the crux of their problem: Michael has never told Kelly “I love you,” three words she's always desperately needed to hear.
Butler, who won the Pulitzer Prize in 1993 for his story collection A Good Scent From A Strange Mountain, narrated by Vietnamese immigrants, has a reputation for taking risks with form, setting, and perspective in his inventive fiction. [He's written a book composed of short narratives delivered by severed heads (Severence), a story collection based on lurid tabloid headlines (Tabloid Dreams), and satirical novel set in hell (Hell). In contrast,] A Small Hotel, a quiet story about the disintegration of a marriage, seems like it wouldn't be much of a challenge for him. But it takes a writer of Butler's experience to be able to guide the reader through this cavalcade of flashbacks without being confusing or unclear, and to structure the revelations for maximum suspense and drama.
There are times when A Small Hotel feels unremittingly bleak. When Butler writes that “laughter wafts into the room like a fresh scent from the street” while Kelly berates herself and contemplates suicide, you might wish you could step outside and join the revelers on Bourbon Street. You also might question whether the issue of Michael not saying “I love you” and the psychology Butler creates to justify this is believable enough as a cause of the wreckage of this relationship. But well, why not? Surely some marriages have had this problem. And at the end of the book, when hope comes barreling in out of nowhere, you'll want to rush toward it quicker than Rhett Butler did toward Scarlett O'Hara in her green curtain dress.
Jenny Shank's first novel, The Ringer, was a finalist for The Reading the West Award, sponsored by the Mountains & Plains Independent Booksellers Association. She is the Books Editor of NewWest.Net.
The author, known for his risk-taking, offers a quiet but well-executed story about a disintigrating marriage
FICTION
A Small Hotel
Robert Olen Butler
(Grove, $24)
Some of literature's greatest plots would have been ruined by modern technology. Take Romeo and Juliet — if those lovesick teenagers had been able to text each other, there would have been no mix-ups over who was dead and who wasn't. And what if Jane Eyre could have gone online to learn that Mr. Rochester was already “in a relationship”?
But in his new, melancholy novel, A Small Hotel, Robert Olen Butler considers the difficulties that one couple has in understanding each other, despite all the contemporary communication devices at their disposal. Michael and Kelly Hays, who are in the process of a divorce, call each other's cellphones incessantly, but can't seem to express their true feelings to each other.
The present action of A Small Hotel takes place over the course of one eventful day, when Kelly is supposed to finalize her divorce from Michael at a judge's chambers in Pensacola, Fla. Instead, she heads to the Olivier House hotel in the New Orleans French Quarter, where she and Michael spent their first night together 25 years earlier, and have been visiting ever since. She packs light, bringing just a few clothes, a bottle of Scotch, and enough Percocet to send a horse to his maker. She is woefully sad. , and in an introspective frame of mind.
Meanwhile, her soon-to-be-ex husband Michael, a successful lawyer, is off with new squeeze Laurie, a woman “young enough to be his daughter,” at a party at an old plantation where everyone must wear antebellum costumes ala Scarlett O'Hara. This isn't Michael's sort of thing—he's hit with a “niggling unease at showing himself in public in costume.” He puts up with it because Laurie wants him to, but he's preoccupied with memories of Kelly.
Given this set-up, it will seem clear who was the victim and who the victimized in Michael and Kelly's relationship, but through layers of flashbacks that build toward the crisis point in their marriage, Butler will gradually upend initial perceptions.
A Small Hotel drifts from past to present, alternating between Kelly's and Michael's perspective as each relives the key moments of their marriage, from their remarkable meeting during Mardi Gras to the birth of their daughter to each character's childhood, which reveals the crux of their problem: Michael has never told Kelly “I love you,” three words she's always desperately needed to hear.
Butler, who won the Pulitzer Prize in 1993 for his story collection A Good Scent From A Strange Mountain, narrated by Vietnamese immigrants, has a reputation for taking risks with form, setting, and perspective in his inventive fiction. [He's written a book composed of short narratives delivered by severed heads (Severence), a story collection based on lurid tabloid headlines (Tabloid Dreams), and satirical novel set in hell (Hell). In contrast,] A Small Hotel, a quiet story about the disintegration of a marriage, seems like it wouldn't be much of a challenge for him. But it takes a writer of Butler's experience to be able to guide the reader through this cavalcade of flashbacks without being confusing or unclear, and to structure the revelations for maximum suspense and drama.
There are times when A Small Hotel feels unremittingly bleak. When Butler writes that “laughter wafts into the room like a fresh scent from the street” while Kelly berates herself and contemplates suicide, you might wish you could step outside and join the revelers on Bourbon Street. You also might question whether the issue of Michael not saying “I love you” and the psychology Butler creates to justify this is believable enough as a cause of the wreckage of this relationship. But well, why not? Surely some marriages have had this problem. And at the end of the book, when hope comes barreling in out of nowhere, you'll want to rush toward it quicker than Rhett Butler did toward Scarlett O'Hara in her green curtain dress.
Jenny Shank's first novel, The Ringer, was a finalist for The Reading the West Award, sponsored by the Mountains & Plains Independent Booksellers Association. She is the Books Editor of NewWest.Net.