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Loading... The White Hotel (1981)by D. M. Thomas
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Booker Prize (94) Favourite Books (713) » 4 more No current Talk conversations about this book. Harold at Twice-Told raved about this novel, but it was Emir Kusturica's interets in bringing it to the screen which inspired my reading. I felt it contrived and flat, though the premise is engaging: the prescience of hysteria. The bits that Thomas stole are the best in the book: shame on you, Donald. The first few chapters felt like an excuse to write deeply graphic sexual fantasies, but reading on it all ties in. I really liked this book, I need to read it again now I know where it leads so I can get the full picture. My favourite book I've read this year. Freud + young woman patient; 20 years analysis tragic It is a dream of electrifying eroticism and inexplicable violence, recounted by a young woman to her analyst, Sigmund Freud. It is a horrifying yet restrained narrative of the Holocaust. It is a searing vision of the wounds of our century, and an attempt to heal them. Interweaving poetry and case history, fantasy and historical truth-telling, The White Hotel is a modern classic of enduring emotional power that attempts nothing less than to reconcile the notion of individual destiny with that of historical fate. This is a story of eroticism and inexplicable violence, recounted by a young woman to her analyst, Sigmund Freud. The book's first three movements consist of the erotic fantasies and case-history of one of the novelist's conception of Sigmund Freud's female patients, overlapping, expanding, and gradually turning into almost normal narrative. But then the story takes a different course with the convulsions of the century, and becomes a testament of the Holocaust, harrowing and chillingly authentic. Only at the end does the fantasy element return, pulling together the earlier themes into a kind of benediction. One aspect that I found interesting was the use of the epistolary form with postcards from the fictional hotel guests included as part of the narrative. Ultimately it is a vision of the wounds of the 20th century, and an attempt to heal them.
What ''The White Hotel'' sets out to perform, clearly, is the diagnosis of our epoch through the experience of an individual; and the highest praise I can give it is that for some time it comes close to achieving that goal. Indeed, the opening sections of the novel are so authoritative and imaginatively daring that I quickly came to feel I had found the book, that mythical book, that would explain us to ourselves. Was inspired by
It is a dream of electrifying eroticism and inexplicable violence, recounted by a young woman to her analyst, Sigmund Freud. It is a horrifying yet restrained narrative of the Holocaust. It is a searing vision of the wounds of the twentieth century, and an attempt to heal them. Interweaving poetry and case history, fantasy and historical truth-telling, "The White Hotel" is a modern classic of enduring emotional power that attempts nothing less than to reconcile the notion of individual destiny with that of historical fate. No library descriptions found.
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![]() GenresMelvil Decimal System (DDC)823.914 — Literature English {except North American} English fiction Modern Period 1901-1999 1945-1999LC ClassificationRatingAverage:![]()
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This book. This book... I gave this to a girl who became my wife for 12 years...
At the time I had not read the book, nor knew what the book was about at all.
I did not find out that I won the girl due to the sexual fantasy until half a dozen years later. . . (