The Pink Hotel by Anna Stothard

First published in Great Britain in 2011; published by Picador on April 23, 2013

The Pink Hotel is narrated by Lily Harris' daughter, whose name is never revealed. Lily's daughter never knew Lily, but she impulsively travels to Venice Beach from London to attend Lily's funeral. She arrives in time for the wake being held at the hotel Lily co-owned. In Lily's room, she watches a fistfight between Richard, Lily's most recent husband, and David, a fashion photographer who knew Lily when she was a model. Using clues she gleans from items she steals from Lily's room, Lily's daughter tracks down people from Lily's past. Although her father told her that Lily was "manipulative and dangerous," Lily's daughter gains different perspectives of her mother as she meets the people who were part of Lily's life.

We often learn about characters in surprising ways -- as, for instance, when Lily's daughter and David compare their scars or discuss their fantasies. Lily's daughter is endowed with quirky personality traits (including a desire for physical pain) that make her a convincing character. She's coming of age, sorting through her confusion, making or avoiding decisions about the person she wants to become. David is older than Lily's daughter but he's also (perhaps belatedly) trying to find an identity he can live with. I'm just as impressed with the thought given to the novel's minor characters -- the gossipy residents of "Little Armenia" (David's neighborhood) who give Lily's daughter their unsolicited advice, the bartender who goes into the back room every hour to feed her addiction.

Part of the charm of The Pink Hotel is that I never had a clue what would happen next. After the first chapter, there is little direct interaction between Lily's daughter and Richard, but a sense of foreboding pervades the novel. Richard is in no condition to stop Lily's daughter when she steals Lily's things, but he makes it clear that he wants the property returned. Yet this isn't a thriller. The Pink Hotel has a plot of sorts, one that holds a surprising turn of events as the story nears its conclusion -- a turn of events that, unlike the rest of the story, is too contrived -- but this is fundamentally a character-driven novel. The plot is a vehicle for Lily's daughter to investigate a series of complex relationships, an investigation that shapes, and helps her to understand, her own identity.

Anna Stothard's prose is evocative and graceful. She sets scenes in photographic detail and plays with some wonderful images of maps transformed into objects of art. The story moves quickly but it's never hurried. Lily's daughter loves words (quiddity is a favorite) and it's clear that Stothard shares her joyful approach to language. "A good word captures the quiddity of its meaning, the drippiness of dripping and phosphorescence of phosphorescent light." The Pink Hotel is full of well-chosen words.

Not everything is resolved by the novel's end, but Lily's daughter is still young, and that's life. Although I was disappointed with some aspects of the novel's concluding chapters, that reaction did not overcome my enjoyment of the story that preceded it. In fact, there are other aspects of the novel's conclusion (those that don't involve the "shocking" revelation) that have the appealing flavor of truth. In the end, the novel's one flaw is not fatal.

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