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Loading... A Private Hotel for Gentle Ladiesby Ellen Cooney
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Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book. No current Talk conversations about this book. This has been on my to-read list for years, so long I don't remember what about the recommendation caught my attention. Whatever it was I didn't see it in the book. Yes, it was good, incredibly well-written, interesting/bordering on crazy characters. But...again I can all but taste the MFA in Creative Writing wafting off this. What is it about Adult Literary fiction that treats life in such a detached and distant way? And makes endings as non-committal as possible. Bottom line, good but not illuminating. Ellen Cooney is a local author--her books are set in Boston or Eastern Massachusetts. I love place as a character, and selfishly, I love reading about Boston. Cooney's A Private Hotel for Gentle Ladies is set in the early 20th century, and details the goings-on of a Beacon Hill brothel (for women!). Red-headed Charlotte married into a rich New England family and succumbed to a mysterious malaise that kept her bedridden for years. Stepping out one winter day, she catches her husband passionately embracing another woman, and without a word, she rides off to Boston. She is saved only by a series of potential improbably coincidences--at every turn, she runs into someone who knows her, owes her, or wants her. She ends up at The Beechmont: A Private Hotel for Gentle Ladies and discovers her true self. At moments wildly fun, others very predictable. I was underwhelmed by the ending. An incredibly boring book. Promised a lot and delivered nothing. I was all for expecting some kind of thrilling, silly, Victorian love affair. Instead I got a pointless and mind numbingly boring account of a bland woman's stay in the most sleepy and unrealistic bordello ever. This book was a complete waste of time. Unfortunately, I was thoroughly disappointed by the novel as a whole. I did enjoy the author’s writing style, particularly her descriptions of the city in winter and her ability to extend the frozen theme into the lives of the characters. Everything else about the book was tepid and unexciting. *Warning: Spoilers* Charlotte’s personal development was not as extensive as I’d hoped and mainly consisted of her trying to recapture the spunk of her youth. Her sexual awakening, which was much touted in the reviews I read, was definitely overrated. Instead of being sexually liberated, she ended up simply falling in love with a younger man (with a fictional tragic childhood) and looking a bit foolish in the end. When confronted with her future with her husband, she decided to return to him in a move that seemed somehow too facile. It was almost as if she felt she had leveled the playing field by having an affair of her own. I didn’t feel as though she had a plan for making their future life together substantially different than their past. Ultimately, this novel was based on excellent premise that just lost steam about a third of the way through. no reviews | add a review
After a convalescence Charlotte Heath, leaves her husband's family mansion to find him kissing another woman. Shocked she leaves for the city and goes to her friend, former cook for the family, who works at the Beechmont. She discovers that the Beechmont is a male brothel where she masters her illness, becomes comfortable with her desires, and learns to deal with her patronizing husband. No library descriptions found.
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I can say with certainty that this is a much more passive book than I expected or would have chosen. And I call it passive despite a heroine who runs away from an unsatisfactory marriage at the very beginning of the book and a plot line that is all about Charlotte finding or at least taking charge of her self. Unfortunately, her every action is so swathed with thoughts and memories about events from the past that an act as simple as crossing a room to look out a window takes several pages. While I do enjoy knowing what motivates a character, in this book the interior world crowded out the exterior far too much for my taste, leaving the false impression that Charlotte doesn't do much except think (even as she's out going and doing and investigating).
I'm also not entirely sure what to make of the ending, but I suspect that's the point. ( )