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Internationally acclaimed Martha Grimes once again turns her hand to crafting a story of such rich atmosphere and intricate suspense that she transports the reader to a world unlike any other. A once-fashionable, now fading resort hotel. A spinster Aunt living in an attic. Dirt roads that lead to dead ends. A house full of secrets and old, dusty furnishings, uninhabited for almost half a century. A twelve-year-old girl with a passion for double-chocolate ice-cream sodas, and decaying lake-fronts, and an obsession with the death by drowning of another young girl, forty years before. Like all important events in the past, there are repercussions and ramifications in the present. In the world as seen by Martha Grimes, those repercussions simmer and seethe and wind their way through hearts and souls. The ramifications can be subtle. Or exhilarating. Passionate. And they can also be deadly. Hotel Paradise is a delicate yet excruciating view of the pettiness and cruelty of small town America. It is a look at the difficult decisions a young girl must make on her way to becoming an adult and the choices she must make between right and wrong, between love and truth, between life and death. It is a novel with extraordinary range and depth that ultimately becomes a thrilling morality play. With its narrative grace, its compelling characters, and its moment-to-moment suspense, Hotel Paradise is Martha Grimes at the top of her form.… (more)
One of my favorites. Read it twice, and probably will read it again. It's not a good book if mystery is what you're looking for. I did not care much for the mystery aspect. What I fell in love with is the voice of the narrator, 12 year-old, Emma. ( )
This book meandered, parts seemed realistic in terms of the POV of a 12 year old, but parts were nonsense, and the story wasn't particularly riveting. I just lost interest. ( )
I'm waiting for the third book Martha Grimes has written about Emma Graham to be posted from America. Meanwhile I am re-reading this and Cold Flat Junction. I suspect these books are set in scenes the author is familiar with from childhood because the writing evokes the place and time so richly. This might be why I place them so high in my estimation - far above anything else I have read by the same author. I am totally captivated by the 'I' of the story and love the shifting sands of knowledge through the books and how the books both stand so complete without pinning anything down. My partner read them in the 'wrong' order and enjoyed them just as much - in fact he rated Cold Flat Junction highest and I put Hotel Paradise marginally on top. ( )
To the memory of June D. Grimes and Lillian F. Davis and, of course, to Will, Mill, and Walter
First words
It's a blowing day.
Quotations
For there she stood, the Girl. Away across the lake. She stood there in that dawn-colored dress with her moon-colored hair as if she were simply looking out over the water in the same way I was. As if she were looking at me.
My mother's buckwheat cakes are beyond my power to describe. But I can see them in my mind's eye - brown-veined, crispy-edged, and just the right degree of sour. I am not Catholic or of any particular creed, but I cross myself whenever I think of those buckwheat cakes.
Cats could dissolve, I'd decided long ago, and re-form themselves on the other side of a wall.
Last words
In case I ever doubt myself and think it all must have been a dream, I still have the neckerchief folded in my pocket. I take it out now, wonder about him. And turn the page.
Internationally acclaimed Martha Grimes once again turns her hand to crafting a story of such rich atmosphere and intricate suspense that she transports the reader to a world unlike any other. A once-fashionable, now fading resort hotel. A spinster Aunt living in an attic. Dirt roads that lead to dead ends. A house full of secrets and old, dusty furnishings, uninhabited for almost half a century. A twelve-year-old girl with a passion for double-chocolate ice-cream sodas, and decaying lake-fronts, and an obsession with the death by drowning of another young girl, forty years before. Like all important events in the past, there are repercussions and ramifications in the present. In the world as seen by Martha Grimes, those repercussions simmer and seethe and wind their way through hearts and souls. The ramifications can be subtle. Or exhilarating. Passionate. And they can also be deadly. Hotel Paradise is a delicate yet excruciating view of the pettiness and cruelty of small town America. It is a look at the difficult decisions a young girl must make on her way to becoming an adult and the choices she must make between right and wrong, between love and truth, between life and death. It is a novel with extraordinary range and depth that ultimately becomes a thrilling morality play. With its narrative grace, its compelling characters, and its moment-to-moment suspense, Hotel Paradise is Martha Grimes at the top of her form.
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