From the New York Times bestselling author and advice columnist, a poignant and funny debut novel about the residents of a women's hotel in 1960s New York City.
The Beidermeier might be several rungs lower on the ladder than the real-life Barbizon, but its residents manage to occupy one another nonetheless. There's Katherine, the first-floor manager, lightly cynical and more than lightly suggestible. There's Lucianne, a workshy party girl caught between the love of comfort and an instinctive bridling at convention, Kitty the sponger, Ruth the failed hairdresser, and Pauline the typesetter. And there's Stephen, the daytime elevator operator and part-time Cooper Union student.
The residents give up breakfast, juggle competing jobs at rival presses, abandon their children, get laid off from the telephone company, attempt to retrain as stenographers, all with the shared awareness that their days as an institution are numbered, and they'd better make the most of it while it lasts.
As trenchant as the novels of Dawn Powell and Rona Jaffe and as immersive as “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel” and “Lessons in Chemistry”, Women's Hotel is a modern classic—and it is very, very funny.
Mara Wilson gives an elegant performance of this novel about the residents of a women's hotel in mid-twentieth-century New York City. Her clear enunciation and careful pacing keep listeners oriented as the narrative sometimes abruptly shifts between the women's backstories and present-day lives. The plot begins with Mrs. Mossler, the hotel's long-term manager, who secured her position by inventing
