Finbar's Hotel: A Novel - Softcover

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0156006332 ISBN 13: 9780156006330

Publisher: Mariner Books, 1999

Synopsis

A unique joint effort finds seven of Ireland's most acclaimed writers, including Roddy Doyle, Colm Toi+a7bi+a7n, and Joseph O'Connor, joining talents to recount the last wild and disreputable night of a once proud Dublin hotel that has definitely seen much better times. Original. 35,000 first printing.

About this title

About the Author

Joseph O'Connor, a bestselling humorist (THE SECRET WORLD OF THE IRISH MALE) and dramatist, is the author of SWEET LIBERTY: TRAVELS IN IRISH AMERICA.

Anne Enright, a former television producer, has written a novel, THE WIG MY FATHER WORE, and a collection of stories, THE PORTABLE VIRGIN.

Colm Tobn has written three novels, including THE SOUTH and THE STORY OF THE NIGHT.

Dermot Bolger is the author of six novels, including THE JOURNEY HOME, and is the editor of THE VINTAGE BOOK OF CONTEMPORARY IRISH FICTION.

Roddy Doyle, author of THE COMMITMENTS, THE SNAPPER, and THE VAN, won the Booker Prize for PADDY CLARKE, HA HA HA.

Jennifer Johnston is the author of six novels, including THE RAILWAY STATION MAN and, most recently, THE ILLUSIONIST. Hugo Hamilton has written several novels including THE LAST SHOT, THE LOVE TEST, and HEADBANGER.

Reviews

The soon-to-be-demolished Dublin semi-landmark, the shabby Finbar's Hotel, is booked solid with seven of Ireland's most talented writers, each of whom tells a chapter of this ingeniously imagined novel. Readers familiar with the literary styles of Roddy Doyle, Colm Toibin, Jennifer Johnson, Hugo Hamilton, Joseph O'Connor, Anne Enright or Dermot Bolger will need to draw on their expertise to discern who wrote which episode, since no direct attribution is provided. Bolger (editor of The Vintage Book of Contemporary Irish Fiction) has masterminded this robust puzzle, and the hotel's very Irish atmosphere blooms with seven stories of nostalgia, humor and melancholy. There's a shaggy dog tale about a kidnapped cat in Room 103 and a hard-drinking Dublin man celebrating a mid-life crisis in 101 just across the hall from the already tense reunion of two sisters in 102. In 104 the night manager's reliving the hotel's shady history while confronting a guest who's checked in under an assumed name; and in 107 a paranoid art thief is worrying about how the woman next door might blow his hand off of a hot Rembrandt, while she in turn reminisces about her first love. One of the chief pleasures of this quirky book is encountering these characters from different perspectives as they intrude briefly into each other's stories. At its strongest points, the writers summon a deep sense of place, both historical and emotional. Not a conventional novel, clearly, yet the interlinked stories tenders more cumulative harmony than a conventional anthology; the heartening, garrulous Finbar's Hotel is a captivating place to check into.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Seven Irish novelistsJoseph O'Connor, Anne Enright, Colm Tobn, Roddy Doyle, Jennifer Johnston, Hugo Hamilton, and Bolger himselfcollaborate, with generally good and at times outstanding results, to tell a tale of a single night in a once-famous, soon-to-be-demolished Dublin hotel. Each of the writers here brings to life a guest who occupies a room on the first floor. Room 101 provides novel entertainment for aging Ben, who's never before been in a hotel. His walk on the wild side takes him in and out of his room, the bar, the residents' lounge, and the nightclub, until finally his intervention in a curbside domestic dispute rewards him with a bloody nose. For sisters Rose and Ivy in 102, it's a rare meeting, requested by matronly Ivy in order to persuade her London-based sibling to come home to see their mothersomething Rose has refused to do since leaving home at age 17. Ken walks into 103 with a ghetto-blaster and a plot to get his revenge on the woman who jilted him. The stories from 104 and 105 are easily the most striking: the former involves the hotel manager and the history of Finbar's, which achieved its success partly through the famous discretion of the founder, the grandfather of the man in 104; the woman in 105 is dying of cancer, but by chance meets an Irish-Jewish tour guide from New York, who gives her the courage to tell her husband and children her sad secret. Peopling other tales are a woman over from America to settle her father's estate (and her memory of a teenage romance), and a burglar trying to sell a Rembrandt and other paintings that represent the heist of his life. More than a curiosity, but less than a masterwork: a collection that holds together surprisingly well given that each story is ultimately self-contained. -- Copyright ©1999, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Hotels provide a cinematic setting where lost souls can comfort one another?or cower, if need be. Finbar's Hotel, a fictitious Dublin firetrap, is no different, and seven contemporary Irish writers?Roddy Doyle (The Woman Who Walked into Doors, LJ 2/15/96) being the most recognizable to American readers?have each written a "room" anonymously. The collaboration blends humor, tragedy, and love. Readers will feel like flies on Finbar's peeling walls, seeing and hearing a little too much of the guests' lives. As editor, Bolger builds a smooth series of crises without cramping the writers' styles (and those "rooms" aren't very big). With luck, the film rights have already been sold and the director will make a better movie than Four Rooms with Finbar's three-dimensional cast of characters. Recommended for popular fiction collections.?Heather McCormack, "Library Journal"
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: Mariner Books
• Publication date: 1999
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0156006332
• ISBN 13: 9780156006330
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 273
• Editor: Bolger Dermot