Hotel World

Check into Hotelworld where the guests are about to experience a long dark night of the soul Remember you must live. Five people: four are living, three are strangers, two are sisters, one is dead. Hotel World takes us through a night in the life of five people's very different worlds. It's luxurious for some, but a long drop for others. Cash or credit? Ali Smith's innovative and extraordinary novel checks us in to the smooth plush world of the Global. But is it really the kind of place you want to spend the rest of your life in? Playful, defiant, richly inventive, Hotel World is a riotous elegy, a deadpan celebration, an alchemy of opposite worlds colliding to make a modern parable of connection and indifference, and, in the end, a defence of love. Forget room service. This is a life-affirming book about death, a death-affirming book about life. Check-out is at noon. For anybody who has ever stayed in a hotel, worked in a hotel, longed to check in to a hotel, this book is a must. An unsettling and disturbing novel, it is often also wildly funny. Hotel World shows the strange and tiny ways we all connect in a rich read that resonates long after you put it down. Ali Smith's prose sizzles and sparks with energy and life. She is a writer who is not afraid to grasp and hold ideas and who has a totally original eye for the smallest detail. Her book is a haunting, mesmerizing story of five women in one hotel.' Jackie Kay 'Ali Smith's Hotel World is courageous and startling. I doubt that I shall read a tougher or more affecting novel this year.' Jim Crace Woooooooo- hooooooo what a fall what a soar what a plummet what a dash into dark into light what a plunge what a glide thud crash what a drop what a rush what a swoop what a fright what a mad hushed skirl what a smash mush mash-up broke and gashed what a heart in my mouth what an end. What a life. What a time. What I felt. Then. Gone. Here's the story; it starts at the end. It was the height of the summer when I fell; the leaves were on the trees. Now it's the deep of winter (the leaves fell off long ago) and this is it, my last night, and tonight what I want more than anything in the world is to have a stone in my shoe. To be walking along the pavement here outside a hotel and to feel a stone rattling about in my shoe as I walk, a small sharp stone, so that it jags into different parts of the sole and hurts just enough to be a pleasure, like scratching an itch. Imagine an itch. Imagine a foot, and a pavement beneath it, and a stone, and pressing the stone with my whole weight hard into the skin of the sole, or against the bones of the bigger toes, or the smaller toes, or the inside curve of the foot, or the heel, or the small ball of muscle that keeps a body upright and balanced and moving across the breathtaking still-hard surface of the world. Because now that my breath , you might say, has been taken, I miss such itching detail all the time. I don't want anything but it. I worry endlessley at the detail that would never had concerned me, not even for a moment of when I was still alive. For example, just for piece of mind, my fall. I would like very much to know how long it took, how long exactly, and I'd do it again in a minute given the chance, the gift of a chance, the chance of a living minute, sixty whole seconds, so many. I'd do it given only a fraction of that with my full weight behind me again if I could (and this time I'd throw myself willingly down it wooo- hooooo and this time I'd count as I went, one elephant two eleph-ahh) if I could feel it again, how I hit it, the basement, from four floors up, from toe to head, dead. Dead leg. Dead arm. Dead hand. Dead eye. Dead I, four floors between me and the world, that's all it took to take me, that's the measure of it, the length and death of it, the short goodb-. Short-listed for the Booker Prize and the Orange Prize for Fiction in 2001, Ali Smith’s Hotel World is the kind of novel that is as rare as good room service – giving a passionate, funny, serious and captivating glimpse into the lives of five people connected to one branch of the ubiquitous Global Hotel chain. We talked to Ali Smith about her early days as a writer, novels versus short stories, and which writers she most admires … You first came onto the scene with Free Love, a collection of short stories, as opposed to a full-length novel. Do you find that you approach these modes of writing differently, or is your method of preparation the same? A novel never leaves you alone; while you're working on it, it never goes away. It takes years, regardless of how long the actual writing of it takes. For me, it's a case of entering it in what's a mixed state of blindness, trust and fear. Short stories are shorter, that's for sure, though no less part of the same cycle of exhilaration and despondency that writing anything is. And the preparation for both never seems to stop. There are no holidays in this job! Do you have a preference between novels and short stories? I think they're both equally hard and equally fulfilling. The great thing about stories is that generally (though not always) they're over more quickly, and there are days, sometimes weeks, in between them where you can sleep without something tugging at your sleeve. How did it feel when you found out that you had been short listed for the Booker Prize for Hotel World? It was, surreally, a mix of delightful and horrifying. I don't like having any attention paid to me at all, but I was delighted for my book. Though I wish it could have done all the publicity, photo calls, etc. by itself … You've said that you are very interested in how popular culture affects the meaning and usage of language. Does this ever become a preoccupation when sitting down to write, ensuring that your ideas come across in the way you've intended them to? No, I never sit down to write to ensure that an idea will come across the way I intend. It's just not what happens. What happens is that I sit down, write something, then look at it to see what it wants to be. It's a combination of instinct and edit. Edit comes after, when you tap its potential, and if you do this properly then both you and the writing will be doing what it should. Which writers did you most admire growing up? I read voraciously, but not the usual things - there was a cupboard above the bed full of the books my brothers and sisters, all older than me, were reading at school. So by ten I'd read all sorts of things like Joyce's Dubliners and Orwell's novels and Swift's Gulliver's Travels. I was fascinated by the Struwelpeter and Lear's Book of Nonsense, and, when I was twelve, I had a rather unsavory passion for the Jill pony books by Ruby Ferguson, all called things like Jill Has Two Ponies and Pony Jobs for Jill (these titles, by the way, have been changed since those - ah! - innocent days!). Do you find that these have influenced your writing to any degree? Ha ha - there's a thought! Pony Jobs for Jill? Well, yes, helplessly - I tend to think that everything we ever read, good or bad, loved or despised or not even really noticed, influences what we write. Pony Jobs for Jill is in there too, for sure. Were you ever given advice by another author, and did you follow it? ‘Eat carrots for re-hydration, and Powerbars, as they're full of fibre.’ from Margaret Atwood, about being on the road, doing readings, staying in hotels, etc. Excellent advice, the best kind, practical, about looking after the self in the most basic way. I follow it. And from Joyce Carol Oates: ‘Ali, when you are sixty, and a young admiring good-looking man in his twenties comes to your door carrying copies of all your books and professing admiration - whatever you do, don't let him in.’ I am not sure yet whether I'll follow this or not. That being said, do you have any advice for aspiring writers? The book comes first. And, just write it. As James Joyce said, ‘in the writing, the good things will come.’