Hotel Du Lac

Synopsis: Into the rarefied atmosphere of the Hotel du Lac timidly walks Edith Hope, romantic novelist and holder of modest dreams. Edith has been exiled from home after embarrassing herself and her friends. She has refused to sacrifice her ideals and remains stubbornly single. But among the pampered women and minor nobility Edith finds Mr Neville, and her chance to escape from a life of humiliating spinsterhood is renewed...This book is the winner of the Booker Prize in 1984.

Review: This is a quiet sort of a book, nothing much happens, it's just a day to day recounting of Edith's stay at the Hotel du Lac. Edith is a novelist and she has gone to the hotel to escape a rather embarrassing and messy situation at home, a situation that is relayed to us in snatches throughout the book. At first she only casually observes the other guests but bit by bit they begin to intrigue her and she starts to interact with them. Among the guests is Mr Neville who offers Edith the sort of marriage that most women would run a mile from (the 'we don't love each other but we do like each other, and if you put on an appearance of being the perfect wife, and turn a blind eye to my dalliances, then I'm prepared to do the same for you' type of marriage) but Edith is tempted as the last thing she wants to become is an old maid and in any case, wouldn't this sort of marriage be more comfortable and less exhausting?

The book is only short and although not exactly riveting, Edith does get under your skin and you do find yourself caring about what becomes of her. There are some well depicted secondary characters, I liked Mrs Pusey and her daughter Jennifer - a couple of snobby shopaholics who, to all intents and purposes, are attractive, young and devoted to each other but on closer acquaintance are not perhaps as young, or as devoted, as first appears but I was unsure about Mr Neville, he seemed a bit cardboard and I couldn't quite believe in him. It's humorous, not in a side splitting way but in a smiling often way and it's beautifully written too but a little patchy, on the whole I loved the writing but there were bits where I drifted.