A Private Hotel for Gentle Ladies

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.

Misled by blurbs -- who me? Surely I am too savvy for that! Ha. The worst part about reading a book that doesn't match what the cover led me to expect (whether the expectation arose from the publisher's copy or from authorial and editorial praises) is that I'm never entirely sure whether I am disappointed by the book on its own merits or for failing to live up to the idea of the book that I'd thought I'd be reading.

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, show more 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. show less

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 show more Private Hotel for Gentle Ladies and discovers her true self.

At moments wildly fun, others very predictable. I was underwhelmed by the ending. show less

An interesting look at family and societal relationships in turn-of-the-century Boston. A long-invalid woman discovers her husband's infidelity and runs away to the city where she finds an eccentric world of lovers and independent women before finding herself. I wasn't particularly impressed with 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.

Had to skip some paragraphs to get to the good stuff. I liked the ending.