Ladies' Night at Finbar's Hotel - Softcover

Bolger, Dermot; Binchy, Maeve; Boylan, Clare; Donoghue, Emma; Haverty, Anne; O'Riordan, Kate; Purcell, Deirdre

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0156008661 ISBN 13: 9780156008662

Publisher: Harvest Books, 2000

Synopsis

A year has passed since the closing of Finbar's Hotel, a down-on-its-heels hotel on the Dublin quays. Now, with a rock star as its new owner, it has once more opened its doors-and Finbar's has become an ultra-chic gathering spot. Ladies' Night at Finbar's Hotel describes one night in its newly illustrious surroundings-a night filled with adventure and comic romp. In one room a man surreptitiously helps his wife's friend get pregnant, while next door a businesswoman battles her father. And down the hall, a nun struggles with the most important mission of her life. A fabulous mix of pathos and high humor, this is a sardonic tour of the gamut of human experience told by Ireland's finest modern storytellers. Maeve Binchy has written numerous bestsellers, most recently Tara Road. Dermot Bolger is the author of six novels and edited The Vintage Book of Contemporary Irish Fiction. Clare Boylan has written six novels and several nonfiction works, including The Literary Companion to Cats. Emma Donoghue is the author of Stirfry and Kissing the Witch, among other works. Anne Haverty's writing has been short-listed for the Whitbread Award. ƒilis N' Dhuibhne has published poetry, short fiction, children's books, and two novels. Kate O'Riordan writes for stage and screen, and has written two novels including The Bray House. Deirdre Purcell recently adapted her novel Falling for a Dancer as a four-part serial for BBC television.

About this title

Review

In this almost-all-girl reprise of the collaborative fiction Finbar's Hotel, Dermot Bolger skillfully weaves together eight chapters, each contributed by a different Irish writer, into a light, coherent, and highly readable novel about a culture in flux. The old Finbar's had been a dark, unchanging place, a "grade two" businessman's hotel in Dublin smelling of gravy and overcooked meat. The impressive new establishment, owned and renovated by the not-quite-respectable Dutch wife of a rock star, is a symbol of 21st-century Ireland--unquaint and anonymous, its chilly white surfaces are indistinguishable from those of a Hilton or a Marriott, despite the "Irish Bar" tucked into one corner of the lobby as a sop to tourists. Bolger is the only man among the writers included, and it is to his credit (or a handsome rebuttal to the old argument about "men's" and "women's" voices in fiction) that we can't tell his contribution from the others. None of the chapters lists its author--a brilliant if unsettling device--so that readers are left wondering whether the bestselling Maeve Binchy, for example, can be distinguished from Anne Haverty and Éilis Ní Dhuibhne, both of whom write poetry as well as prose. Other contributors are Kate O'Riordan, Deirdre Purcell, and Dublin natives Clare Boylan and Emma Donoghue.

Most of the female protagonists are returning to the Dublin of their youth after finding success elsewhere: a former maid comes back to meet the son she gave up for adoption; a faded movie starlet's luck takes a strangely positive turn; a nun looks for a man to sleep with. In "Da Da Da--Daa," an up-and-coming designer tries to corner the Dublin market for her soft, Celtic-inspired fashion line, and instead must endure a long encounter with her mentally ill father. Looking anxiously around the lobby as her room is being readied, Poppy realizes the risks she is taking just by showing up again in the city of her troubled childhood. And if she cannot make her mark as a designer in Dublin, what will success anywhere else mean? But at least for a moment, her assistant takes her mind off her own problems:

He returned her smile confidently, but he was mincing like a camp poodle, so she knew he was nervous. First time to Ireland for this second-generation Bronxer. Secretly, he'd expected to be lynched. So he swaggered, flaunting the homosexuality that had so repelled his Roscommon father. So nervous, he couldn't yet see that the fabled Ireland of his youth, the endless, monotonous, force-fed sentimentality of his parents, had no bearing on this new country. For all the world as though he couldn't see the blatant y.e.s. tattooed on the buttocks of the porter's young assistant.

Although the early chapters of Ladies' Night read more like short stories than the opening of a conventional novel, Bolger teases the reader with recurrent scenes and characters, so that the final stories bring satisfying conclusions to several mysteries--and not a few surprises. --Regina Marler

About the Author

Maeve Binchy has written numerous bestsellers, most recently Tara Road. Dermot Bolger is the author of six novels and edited The Vintage Book of Contemporary Irish Fiction. Clare Boylan has written six novels and several nonfiction works, including The Literary Companion to Cats. Emma Donoghue is the author of Stirfry and Kissing the Witch, among other works. Anne Haverty's writing has been short-listed for the Whitbread Award. Eilis Ni Dhuibhne has published poetry, short fiction, children's books, and two novels. Kate O'Riordan writes for stage and screen, and has written two novels including The Bray House. Deirdre Purcell recently adapted her novel Falling for a Dancer as a four-part serial for BBC television.

About this edition

• Publisher: Harvest Books
• Publication date: 2000
• ISBN 10: 0156008661
• ISBN 13: 9780156008662
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 257