Haotel Splendid - (European Women Writers) by Marie Redonnet (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

Like traveling a very long, very dark tunnel into a blinding bright beautiful light--Kirkus

Hôtel Splendid recounts the daily life of three sisters who live in a decrepit hotel on the edge of a swamp. The narrator, the youngest of the sisters, struggles to preserve the hotel in the face of insurmountable dilemmas: the decay of the building, the indifference and illness of her sisters, the remorseless expansion of the swamp. Confronted with dissolution and death, she displays a tireless persistence that is nearly as mysterious as it is moving.

This is one of three novels that are the first works to appear in English by Marie Redonnet, one of France's most original new authors (the other novels are Forever Valley and Rose Mellie Rose, both also available from the University of Nebraska Press). Translator Jordan Stump notes that these books "unmistakably fit together, although they have neither characters nor setting in common." In all three novels, Redonnet has said, "it is the women who fight, who seek, who create."

From the Back Cover

Hotel Splendid recounts the daily lives of three sisters who live in a decrepit hotel on the edge of the swamp. The narrator, the youngest of the sisters, struggles to preserve the hotel in the face of insurmountable dilemmas: the decay of the building, the indifference and illness of her sisters, the remorseless expansion of the swamp. Confronted with dissolution and death, she displays a tireless persistence that is nearly as mysterious as it is moving.

Review Quotes

"Marie Redonnet's 1986 classic reveals a world that is as resplendent as it is disturbed, one where to succumb to impermanence proves more worthwhile than to resist."--Tricia Viveros, transitbooks.org-- (7/25/2023 12:00:00 AM)

"In Hôtel Splendid, the youngest of three sisters cares for her two ailing siblings and fights to save the decrepit family hotel from total decay as it sinks slowly into a swamp. . . . Jordan Stump's excellent translation successfully captures the haunting, impressionistic nature of Redonnet's prose. Her deceptively simple style, with its short sentences and minimalist vocabulary, evokes fleeting moods and situations and gives [her] novels a poetic, musical quality. Strangely moving in its simplicity, her work is to be highly recommended to all those who appreciate the soothing effects of fairy tales and legends."--Review of Contemporary Fiction

"Like traveling a very long, very dark tunnel into a blinding bright beautiful light."--Kirkus

About the Author

Jordan Stump is a professor of French at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.