The Lonely Hearts Hotel: the Bailey's Prize longlisted novel - Hardcover

O'Neill, Heather

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1849163359 ISBN 13: 9781849163354

Publisher: riverrun, 2017

Synopsis

'Joyful, funny and vividly alive' Emily St John Mandel
'The Lonely Hearts Hotel sucked me right in and only got better and better . . . I began underlining truths I had hungered for' Miranda July
'Makes me think of comets and live wires . . . raises goosebumps' Helen Oyeyemi
'A fairytale laced with gunpowder' Kelly Link

The Lonely Hearts Hotel is a love story with a difference. Set throughout the roaring twenties, it is a wicked fairytale of circus tricks and child prodigies, radical chorus girls, drug-addicted musicians and brooding clowns, set in an underworld whose economy hinges on the price of a kiss.

It is the tale of two dreamers, abandoned in an orphanage where they were fated to meet. Here, in the face of cold, hunger and unpredictable beatings, Rose and Pierrot create a world of their own, shielding the spark of their curiosity from those whose jealousy will eventually tear them apart.

When they meet again, each will have changed, having struggled through the Depression, through what they have done to fill the absence of the other. But their childhood vision remains - a dream to storm the world, a spectacle, an extravaganza that will lift them out of the gutter and onto a glittering stage.

Heather O'Neill's pyrotechnical imagination and language are like no other. In this she has crafted a dazzling circus of a novel that takes us from the underbellies of war-time Montreal and Prohibition New York, to a theatre of magic where anything is possible - where an orphan girl can rule the world, and a ruined innocence can be redeemed.

About this title

Review:

Heather O'Neill's style is laced with so much sublime possibility and merciless actuality (and vice versa) that it makes me think of comets and live wires and william blake's tyger . . . between prose like that and a story like this, you have a book that raises goosebumps and the giddiest of grins more or less simultaneously (Helen Oyeyemi)

Because this book is so filled with delightful things - bold and complex sex; heartache and wickedness and glittering hearts - it would be easy to overlook how finely it is made. The Lonely Hearts Hotel sucked me right in and only got better and better, ultimately becoming much tougher, wiser than I was prepared for. I began underlining truths I had hungered for but never before read. By the end I was a gasping, tearful mess. (Miranda July)

O'Neill is an extraordinary writer, and her new novel is exquisite. She has taken on sadness itself as a subject, but it would be terribly reductive to say that this book is sad; it's also joyful, funny, and vividly alive. (Emily St John Mandel, author of Station Eleven)

A fairy tale laced with gunpowder and romance and icing sugar, all wrapped round with a lit fuse. Each of Heather O'Neill's sentences pricks or delights. If you haven't read her other books, start with this one and then read all of the rest. (Kelly Link)

O'Neill at the height of her literary powers . . . her most book gripping to date . . . Ferociously direct. . . A ravishing novel, that, for all its brutality, retains a childlike appreciation for the fantastic. (Andre Forget Walrus)

A love story of epic proportions...this novel will cast a spell upon readers from page one. (Publisher's Weekly)

Walking the hypnotic line between tragedy and fairy tale ...Grotesque and whimsical at once, the love story that unfolds is a fable of ambition and perseverance, desperation and heartbreak. But while Pierrot is unforgettable, the novel belongs to Rose, a woman who - if she cannot carve out space for herself in upstanding daylight - will rise to power in the underworld of night. O'Neill's prose is crisp and strange, arresting in its frankness; much like the novel itself, her writing is both gleefully playful and devastatingly sad. Big and lush and extremely satisfying; a rare treat. (Kirkus)

O'Neill is a mistress of metaphor and imagery ... This is brilliant tragicomedy ... in a melancholy love story that brings to life the bygone days of theatrical revues. It's a little weird and a lot of fun. (Booklist)

O'Neill's prose is gorgeous, with arresting imagery. This simultaneously heartbreaking and life-affirming novel depicts the range of the human experience through the eyes of its almost pretenaturally charming hero and heroine . . . This is an original and unforgettable novel. (Library Journal)

A romance that's straight out of a strange, prettily twisted fairytale (Psychologies)

Book Description:

A novel about childhood damage and the redemptive power of art from an author twice listed for the Women's Prize and the Giller Prize

About this edition

• Publisher: riverrun
• Publication date: 2017
• ISBN 10: 1849163359
• ISBN 13: 9781849163354
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 400