HOTEL WORLD

HOTEL WORLD, a finalist for the 2001 Booker Prize, is a stunning feat of imagination and deftness. Smith creates five characters--one of them a ghost--loosely bound by a connection to a British hotel and an awful event that occurred there. The ghost is that of Sara Wilby, a chambermaid who plummeted to her death in a dumbwaiter. The others, a homeless woman, a receptionist, a journalist, and Sara's younger sister, jointly and inadvertently combine in a story that is at once affirming and often humorous without ever lapsing into sentimentality. The book is told successively in each character's voice, but rather than trying to make each distinctive, Helen Lederer realizes that it is not accents or inflections that always distinguish character, but differing perspectives. Her representation of every character's inner life is earnest and heartfelt, exactly how one would regard one's own thoughts. M.O. (c) AudioFile 2003, Portland, Maine [Published: DEC 03/JAN 04]