21st Century Literature discussion

I'm dividing the novel into four , which neatly falls at around a hundred pages a week

So far I am enjoying the light tone which contrasts with the plight and anxiety of most of the guests . I like the way the story of Gaby and his " access all areas " , having being adopted by the hotel staff, gives us a glimpse behind the scenes and allows us to experience the world " below stairs ". He is very self possessed and direct with complete faith that his family will join him.

Edited to say, I realize this sounds very grumpy, which I am usually not :) I'm not going to change the text below, but just reflect a bit on why it I got irritated and read some more tonight!

Since supposedly the stories are true I might finish reading this for historical perspective, but from a literary perspective, I'm not really impressed.

For example, the author's indecision about his frame and narrative voice is kind of making me crazy. It starts out with the narrator in first person plural, who says says Black is discrete, wont share details, then shifts to third person omniscient, who says but if he did perhaps he would tell them (meaning the original first person plural narrator) about Gaby, and then the next chapter starts right back with the first person plural who now knows all about Gaby?! How? This was set up to be third person secret Black keeping his secret and tell us the reader but not them the breezy original narrator who cant keep a secret and isn't serious.

Easy reading because kind of amateur.

I'm also enjoying the light tone. I can see why there are the comparisons to Casablanca, with its assortment of personalities existing in a fragile bulwark against the raging horrors occuring outside.

Gaby is probably the perfect choice, if a somewhat obvious literary device, for the tone and narration. Instead of tiresome exposition, the characters explain themselves and their history to us via Gaby, the intelligent and curious but naive boy. Works for me, as I know as much about the history of the place as your average 10 year-old.

Jenna, I didn't have your issues with the narration, and I'm not sure I follow everything you're saying.

I like books that have narrators who are unnamed and unimportant characters in themselves. I think the first chapter with Black looking back is to let us know this is a mix of history and invention, As Black says of himself, "I’m so old that all I remember is what I’ve invented myself." I think it was an intentional bit of misdirection calling the next chapter "Things I Invented Myself" impling Black will be the narrator when it's apparently an anonymous denizen of Estoril, one who is also letting us know this is a work of imagination, not history. At least, that's how I read it.

I don't want to be a total curmudgeon or belabor the point for those whom it did not irritate, but briefly Whitney, since you asked, the framing intro shows us Mr Black refusing to be drawn into conversation about the war, but about to remember to himself. Fine, setting us up as you say with the title of the first chapter (things I invented myself) for the book to be drawn from his memory. There is the vague "them" to whom Mr Black refuses to tell however, so that when the first chapter started with a "we" narrator ("The war had broken out ... We were caught by surprise...") I was suddenly thinking wait, did he tell "them" after all? But if this we was at the hotel during the war, wouldn't they know the stories? Would they need Mr Black to remember? What was the point of the frame? But then that POV fades and it is back to omniscient third person following Mr Black through the story set up by the frame. And then basically the POV has stuck with third person omniscient for the rest as far as I have gotten, but now so far from Mr Black's experience and perspective that he isn't even in some of the anecdotes. So why was the frame set up around him? He is irrelevant except as a way to introduce us to the next character in the chain, Gaby. Who also fades in and out of relevance. I was too super aware of the introductory material as construct for it to be effective, seemed like an assignment from a writing workshop to use "literary devices" to get the book started, and he tried two different ones and liked them both, so used both even though they don't work together.

I can see what you mean Jenna, but I'm not perturbed by it . For me the story reads like a series of fragments and Mr Black's imperfect or , perhaps , discrete memory allows the narrator to proceed with " things I invented myself " .

I'm liking the experience of being immersed in the place and meeting people at random with this mix of real events and fiction. It's true the characters are tending towards archetypes and the writing is simple but I'm fascinated by the way the hotel and it's staff is maintain " standards" on the edges of the tornado of war . Makes me think of the way we live now.

I agree with Hester. I see the novel in the genre of hotel novels and the emphasis is on the various stories and not as much overall literary structure, with the object to entertain. Compare Grand Hotel or either season of HBO's White Lotus.

So far it's as I expected . Not great literature but I'm finding it entertaining . The spy who Fleming based Bond on has just made his appearance and I'm hoping for more intrigue .

My copy arrived and I've started. I'm halfway through this first part.

I'm finding it delightful - this island of decency within a world gone mad is heartening. I think that's part of what makes it so fun to read; the characters in the hotel treat each other with kindness and tact, especially the boy . . . such as the way the hotel staff graciously allow him into their staff dining hall on his birthday. But the hotel is full of refugees of various sorts as outside, the world begins to burn.

The innocence of the boy's perspective allows the author a very non-confrontational way to question the time's status quo . . . such as the boy's innocent wondering of why the doorman can't just leave the door propped open. But that questioning spills over into more serious matters too.

I wonder if the episode really happened where the consul general Dr Aristides de Sousa Mendes started granting everyone visas as they fled the crises in their home countries? It must have been a serious dilemma for people of conscience in positions like his across the region in that era. I wonder what I would have done. Mendes lost his job for it, and possibly more than that.

The humor throughout is a wonderful counterbalance to the seriousness of the topic. I enjoyed the humor surrounding Senhor Sardoso's various schemes. I laughed out loud when he says in a low voice, 'There may even be leftists among them." He's preposterous, but with the benefit of history, we know that what's occurring is deadly serious too.

It's haunting when the former Polish prime minister plays political pieces for his concert . . . in the fragility of age, struggling for a cause we know to be doomed in the short term. And Sardoso prevents the papers from publishing his interviews; he passes through the country without a trace.

I finished part one yesterday.

The spy part is intriguing and suitably bizarre - I suspect in real life, it was just as bizarre and baffling, with a proliferation of double agents and questionable loyalties. It's my own ignorance, but I had to look up Abwehr, PVDE, fifth column and some other terms of the period.

But what attracted me most in the first part, other than the things I mentioned in my last post, was the strange and sometimes lyrical character of Tonio/"Big Man." His descriptions of the desert are so lyrical and oblique. For example, the passage about desert silences, the "false silence", the "silence of intrigue", the "silence of mystery", the "tense silence", and the "sharp silence". I love the way he describes them. "There is a false silence when the north wind has dropped, and the appearance of insects, drawn like pollen from their inner oasis, announces the eastern storm . . . ." It's quite lovely, and the descriptions are often suggestive of some deeper truth that's hard to express directly. I love his cryptic statement earlier, "What makes the desert beautiful is that somewhere it hides a well." Clearly, "Big Man" is an unusual person, and that comes across, with his tamed hyenas and foxes and all of his strange travels. I can just imagine what a curiosity he would be to a young boy, much as he would be to an imaginative adult!

I do hope there will be more of him prior to his departure.

Anyway, although the book might not yet be intellectually complex, it's thoroughly enjoyable. And I do think it has a touch of something literary about it - it's not just pure candy. There are some real questions here, though the story has an affable, noncontentious touch.

It captures my imagination, this world of people trying to escape the tragedies unfolding in their home countries, this world of so many sudden refugees, even among the rich who are not accustomed to be in that position. With the wealthy bankers and deposed leaders passing through, I can imagine it felt sometimes in that hotel as "Big Man" describes it:

"I have a sinking feeling when I look at the people around me. Not contempt, or irony, just a slight sinking feeling. Like being at the zoo and looking at the last surviving examples of a soon-to-be extinct animal. I watch them pretending that nothing unusual is happening. Gambling away enormous amoutns of money just to feel alive. Like a puppet show, but a sad one."

Greg wrote: "But what attracted me most in the first part, other than the things I mentioned in my last post, was the strange and sometimes lyrical character of Tonio/"Big Man." His descriptions of the desert are so lyrical and oblique..."

Greg, I don't think this is considered a "spoiler" since his presence in the book is mentioned in the blurb. "Tonio" is Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, author of The Little Prince. The passages about the desert are direct quotes from his writing.

Whitney wrote: "Greg, I don't think this is considered a "spoiler" since his presence in the book is mentioned in the blurb. "Tonio" is Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, author of The Little Prince. The passages about the desert are direct quotes from his writing."

Ah, Whitney, I certainly have heard of Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, but I have never read him before. I guess this is a confirmation that I should definitely read him, as I am sure to like it! He's a fascinating character even in the glimpses this book provides. Do you happen to know which book these quotes about the desert come from?

@ Whitney . Thanks . I read a book of his years ago , I think it was Wind , Sand and Stars ..looks like he published that in 1939 ? Do the quotes come from there? I remember it was a memoir about the audacity of flying , of adventure . I'm more of the tenacious sort , the plodder , but the memory of the book stayed with me .

@Greg . I agree . Another angle this book takes is the effect of the war on Central Europe , as we meet our Yugoslavian spy and , in the next section , the exiled king of Romania .

why ...can't the doorman just leave the door propped open = why can't the consul general just leave the border propped open = why are these uniforms keeping my parents from joining me

Hester wrote: "@ Whitney . Thanks . I read a book of his years ago , I think it was Wind , Sand and Stars ..looks like he published that in 1939 ? Do the quotes come from there? I remember it was a memoir about t..."

It's from Letter to a Hostage, which I'm guessing was the main inspiration to Tiago-Stanković for writing Estoril. I'm by no means an expert on Saint-Exupéry, I looked up the quote and then immediately bought the book, which I highly recommend.

I became a little less enamored of "Estoril" as it went on (see my comment in the next section). I hadn't commented yet in the "entire book" thread, as I was waiting for people to catch up. I don't think that Tiago-Stanković really got below the surface of people's lives in Estoril, whereas Saint-Exupéry really does in his sections in "Letter" that are on Portugal during the war, as the "puppet show" passage Greg quoted above demonstrates. It's another direct quote from "Letter to a Hostage".

Whitney wrote: "I became a little less enamored of "Estoril" as it went on (see my comment in the next section). I hadn't commented yet in the "entire book" thread, as I was waiting for people to catch up. I don't think that Tiago-Stanković really got below the surface of people's lives in Estoril, whereas Saint-Exupéry really does in his sections in "Letter" that are on Portugal during the war, as the "puppet show" passage Greg quoted above demonstrates. It's another direct quote from "Letter to a Hostage"."

All of my favorite passages in this book seem to be directly lifted from another author's work!

Ah well. At least it's introducing us or , in my case, reminding me of another author. .... I also realised I had bought on Audible Lisbon :War in the Shadows of the City of Light by Neill Lochery, which is a history of this period . Will pick that up next .

Hester wrote: "Ah well. At least it's introducing us or , in my case, reminding me of another author. .... I also realised I had bought on Audible Lisbon :War in the Shadows of the City of Light by Neill Lochery,..."

I'm still enjoying it enough Hester, though as I said in the part 2 comments earlier, I'm not quite as engaged by the spy chapters as by the chapters with Gaby so far.

I still have a long way to go.