She Treads Softly: The Pink Hotel

Sunday, July 17, 2022

The Pink Hotel

The Pink Hotel by Liska Jacobs
7/19/22; 336 pages
MCD

The Pink Hotel by Liska Jacobs is a so-so social satire.

After meeting Richard and Ilka Beaumont, Keith and Kit Collins have been invited by Richard to spend their honeymoon in the iconic Pink Hotel located in Beverly Hills. Richard, who is the general manager, hopes to hire Keith to work there for him. Kit is less sure that this is the life she wants. Then circumstances (riots, rolling blackouts, fires, sudden new wealthy guests) occur that have the hotel being a refuge for the wealthy only and Keith off helping Richard while Kit is left alone.

The actual descriptive writing is quite good, but the barely there plot and slow pace isn't good. If you can overcome the glacially slow start, no characters you remotely care about and rather predictable antagonism against the ultra-wealthy, then I'd recommend this novel. If that doesn't seem like something you'd enjoy, pass on it. Admittedly, after wondering what direction the novel was meandering toward for over half of it, beyond social class, things pick up but not enough to redeem it.

Disclosure: My review copy was courtesy of Macmillan via NetGalley.

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John Updike's six rules for reviewing:

1. Try to understand what the author wished to do, and do not blame him for not achieving what he did not attempt.

2. Give him enough direct quotation--at least one extended passage--of the book's prose so the review's reader can form his own impression, can get his own taste.

3. Confirm your description of the book with quotation from the book, if only phrase-long, rather than proceeding by fuzzy precis.

4. Go easy on plot summary, and do not give away the ending.

5. If the book is judged deficient, cite a successful example along the same lines, from the author's oeuvre or elsewhere. Try to understand the failure. Sure it's his and not yours?

To these concrete five might be added a vaguer sixth, having to do with maintaining a chemical purity in the reaction between product and appraiser.....Review the book, not the reputation.... Better to praise and share than blame and ban. The communion between reviewer and his public is based upon the presumption of certain possible joys in reading, and all our discriminations should curve toward that end.