The Lonely Hearts Hotel: A Novel
NAMED A BEST BOOK OF 2017 BY THE BOSTON GLOBE AND THE SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE "So filled with vivid descriptions and complex characters that the reader's experience is virtually cinematic. . . Utterly compelling." - The Washington Post From the author of When We Lost Our Heads, a spellbinding story about two gifted orphans - in love with each other since they can remember - whose childhood talents allow them to rewrite their future. The Lonely Hearts Hotel is a love story with the power of legend. An unparalleled tale of charismatic pianos, invisible dance partners, radicalized chorus girls, drug-addicted musicians, brooding clowns, and an underworld whose economy hinges on the price of a kiss. In a landscape like this, it takes great creative gifts to thwart one's origins. It might also take true love. Two babies are abandoned in a Montreal orphanage in the winter of 1914. Before long, their talents emerge: Pierrot is a piano prodigy; Rose lights up even the dreariest room with her dancing and comedy. As they travel around the city performing clown routines, the children fall in love with each other and dream up a plan for the most extraordinary and seductive circus show the world has ever seen. Separated as teenagers, sent off to work as servants during the Great Depression, both descend into the city's underworld, dabbling in sex, drugs and theft in order to survive. But when Rose and Pierrot finally reunite beneath the snowflakes - after years of searching and desperate poverty - the possibilities of their childhood dreams are renewed, and they'll go to extreme lengths to make them come true. Soon, Rose, Pierrot and their troupe of clowns and chorus girls have hit New York, commanding the stage as well as the alleys, and neither the theater nor the underworld will ever look the same. With her musical language and extravagantly realized world, Heather O'Neill enchants us with a novel so magical there is no escaping its spell.
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Community Reviews
I randomly picked this book up at target without even reading what it was about… anddddd wow it started off strong and had me on my toes from the beginning. The events that happen to the characters are so depressing, disgusting, and inhumane. However, the fact that it is placed during the Great Depression it makes you feel more for what people went through during that time. This book played with my heart strings and had me digging my nails into my palm while verbally arguing with it in public places. The characters are so beautifully flawed and the scenery is so depressing BUT Heather O’ Neills choice of words when writing the imagery is like reading poetry. I will never not think about this book. I want to read it again so badly but I’m giving it time so hits me the same as the first time reading it. The ending is also amazing and I rarely can say that with most books I’ve read.
The whole thing was sad and gritty for my taste and I admit I skimmed the ending so I could finish it. But I did like how descriptive it was. If you don't mind books that don't have happy endings then this might be up your alley
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