Breakaway Books

Authored by Daniel Lavery; Published October 2024; Historical Fiction

⭐️⭐️⭐️ / 🏖️

I am so glad to live in the 21st century, where women can work and live independently in their own apartments. As much as Women’s Hotel brings the humor, it did not sell me on the collective dorm style living enjoyed by some women in the 1960s.

In Women’s Hotel, the Biedermeier is home to a handful of working girls in the 1960s, who are, to say the least, eccentric. Much of the story centers on Katherine, a recovering alcoholic who has been effectively banished from her midwestern home. As we learn about the residents’ adventures, we are introduced to anarchist Pauline, husband hunter Gia, and the off-balance Ruth, along with the owner of the hotel and the elevator operator Stephen. Each girl is scrapping her way through New York City life with surprisingly little food and less money.

I am *alarmed* at how very little these women eat and how much energy and creativity goes into finding ways to get other people to pay for their food. But, it is reflective of this period of history: The women are independent enough to have their own jobs but not enough to have a job with a decent wage; independent enough to live away from their families, but not enough to live on their own. The lives of the women in the hotel reflect this strange middling stage, with the bizarre collection of women described above.

Katherine seems among the most sympathetic of the bunch: It baffled me how her family could so easily shove her out of their lives, and yet, Katherine remains so very resilient, determined to be of service to those around her, rather than bitter at her fate. She is a non-traditional heroine but I found that she grew on me quickly. In contrast, I didn’t know how to react to Ruth. She alarmed me from her introduction, but all the characters around her treat her as harmless, if off-putting. But breaking into another girl’s room? Semi-stalking the boyfriend of a co-resident? Although her behavior seems to be played for laughs, to me, she never seems humorous, but rather dangerous.

The closest that the author gets to a narrative with a traditional climax in this novel is in Ruth’s confrontation with some of the other girls, but even that doesn’t involve much of a buildup. For the most part, the novel merely describes a period of time in the building with little in the way of narrative. I’ll admit it’s not my favorite style of novel. It leaves me to mostly judge the novel by how much I want to spend time with the residents of the Biedermeier, and frankly, I’d had enough by the end of the novel.

Women’s Hotel will transport you to a very specific and not altogether pleasant period of America’s history for women. It’s definitely a unique perspective, but perhaps not one to escape to.