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A Small Hotel

3.35 of 5 stars 3.35 · rating details · 731 ratings · 193 reviews

Set in contemporary New Orleans but working its way back in time, A Small Hotel chronicles the relationship between Michael and Kelly Hays, who have decided to separate after twenty-four years of marriage. The book begins on the day that the Hays are to finalize their divorce. Kelly is due to be in court, but instead she drives from her home in Pensacola, Florida, across t...more

Hardcover, 241 pages

Published August 6th 2011 by Grove Press (first published July 5th 2011)

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Sep 06, 2011 Karima rated it 4 of 5 stars

Though many describe this book as the story of the dissolution of a marriage, I saw it as a masterful portrayal of people caught in their own limitations, which are also the limitations of their parents and will be the limitations of their children if they don't CUT IT OUT!!! Some are critical of the author's choice of writing about this topic (marital reconfiguring) on the heels of his own, fairly recent (2007) divorce. I am of the "write-about-what-you-know" school of thought. Especially if yo...more

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Jun 04, 2011 Jay rated it 5 of 5 stars

I have to admit that when this book was recommended to me, I had reservations about reading it. A story about the relationship of a married couple? Sounded like a 'chick lit' type of book and something I usually avoid. But I read it and I'm so glad I did. This book has instantly become one of my favourite reads.

The story revolves around a couple from their first meeting at Mardi Gras in New Orleans, to their divorce and is told via the memories of the two main characters. It is the story of a fa...more

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Nov 04, 2011 Haines Borough Public Library added it

Shelves: book-burrow-radio-show

See it in the catalog here: http://haines.evergreencatalog.com/op...

November 2011

This is a quiet, thoughtful novel set in present-day New Orleans. Robert Olen Butler, an eloquent writer, pulls off a difficult story-line in a way that only a seasoned writer like himself could. Michael and Kelly Hays are divorcing, and the novel works its way back in time to understand how two human beings came to be married and what, over time, made them fall apart. I loved the way Butler doesn't pick sides: he l...more

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Sep 25, 2011 Cynthia rated it 4 of 5 stars

Are you in the mood for a heavy and deep read revolving around the end of a marriage? Then "A Small Hotel" is for you.

Butler masterfully weaves the story of Michael & Kelly, a 40-something couple in the process of ending their marriage. On what is supposed to be the day of their divorce, we hear each of their voices as they look back over the 25+ years of their relationship.

For Kelly, that day comes and she is unable to walk into the court to finalize the divorce. Instead she heads to the...more

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Sep 19, 2011 Jenny Shank rated it 3 of 5 stars

http://www.dallasnews.com/entertainme...

The author, known for his risk-taking, offers a quiet but well-executed story about a disintigrating marriage

FICTION
A Small Hotel
Robert Olen Butler
(Grove, $24)

Some of literature's greatest plots would have been ruined by modern technology. Take Romeo and Juliet — if those lovesick teenagers had been able to text each other, there would have been no mix-ups over who was dead and who wasn't. And what if Jane Eyre could have gone online to learn that Mr. Roc...more

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Aug 25, 2011 Lisa Guidarini rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: pulitzer-authors, review-book, netgalley

This is why I try to avoid reading other reviews of books before I write my own thoughts. According to a major newspaper's book blog, Butler's latest novel comes uncomfortably close to mirroring his own 1995 divorce, made infamous after an extremely personal email he wrote went astray. An email about why his marriage failed, citing specifics about his ex-wife's past.

I'll be honest, knowing Butler was at least inadvertently responsible for this happening pre-disposes me to feel a little disgusted...more This is why I try to avoid reading other reviews of books before I write my own thoughts. According to a major newspaper's book blog, Butler's latest novel comes uncomfortably close to mirroring his own 1995 divorce, made infamous after an extremely personal email he wrote went astray. An email about why his marriage failed, citing specifics about his ex-wife's past.

I'll be honest, knowing Butler was at least inadvertently responsible for this happening pre-disposes me to feel a little disgusted, but I know I'm projecting my own prejudices and that's irresponsible. A writer's personal life should not have anything to do with any assessment of his art. It also hasn't escaped me that this newspaper's (I don't want to give them any more curious readers) intention in mentioning Butler's divorce fiasco in the context of this novel may be ethically suspect, stepping over the line comparing real life with fiction, judging a writer's art by way of one particular incident. That makes me more disgusted. I believe that's called opportunism.

Putting that aside, I very much enjoyed the novel. I found it well-framed, using a couple's present-day divorce to bracket remembered episodes throughout their 24-year marriage, flashing back and forward, starting the day Kelly Hays doesn't show up at the courthouse to sign final divorce papers. Instead, she flees to the New Orleans hotel where she and husband Michael first got to know each other, spent their honeymoon, and returned to often throughout their marriage.

On the same day, Michael takes his 29-year old girlfriend to an antebellum costume party at a plantation home an hour away. The two haven't consummated their relationship but intend to the same evening Kelly's in New Orleans drinking scotch and contemplating a drastic step.

We're also given a bit of back story: both Michael and Kelly grew up with distant fathers they loved intensely, leading Michael to become withdrawn and Kelly to crave what she never had as a child. This proves to be key in the eventual demise of their marriage, as well as a factor in relation to their own 20-year old daughter.

A plot like this could well have turned out to be schmaltzy and melodramatic, but it wasn't anything like that. I was annoyed by the overuse of the expression "waiting a beat" - "a beat" already becoming a convention - but it was a book I could hardly stand to put down and couldn't wait to pick back up again.

Reading back through the plot description I'm baffled as to how Butler managed to avoid turning this into a Hallmark Special script. Maybe it's because the issues he raises - the importance of communication in a marriage, and how the lack of it can ultimately bring about its downfall - are so true. Or perhaps the seriousness with which he approached it and the language he used, avoiding any heaving breasts or throbbing organs. Had it been otherwise I wouldn't have even bothered addressing the novel.

Lacking the time to go back and thoroughly analyze his prose style, I can only say he pulled it off with aplomb. It's a great read, rendering any resemblance this book may have to a former real-life relationship moot. Because the last time I checked an author was allowed to use life experience, so long as there's nothing libelous, and divorce isn't really a unique situation you wouldn't expect to find in a book. If it were otherwise there would have been a lot of books left unwritten.

Did I miss something? If I did I'm mighty angry I didn't get the memo.

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Aug 10, 2011 Jessica rated it 2 of 5 stars

Shelves: adult-books

After reading Water for Elephants and loving it, I thought I would look into reading another adult fiction book. After looking at various websites for a “good” book to read, I ended up coming across Oprah’s summer reading book list, A Small Hotel being one of her picks. I read the summary on B&N and also some readers’ opinions about the book on GoodReads and thought I would give it a try.
Told without chapters, the best way I can describe this book is one that slowly builds tension and leave...more

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Jul 10, 2011 Grace rated it 4 of 5 stars

Author: Robert Olen Butler
Title: A Small Hotel
Description (source): Pulitzer Prize winner Robert Olen Butler has written fiction about far-ranging topics including hell, extraterrestrials, and the Vietnam War. With A Small Hotel, his twelfth novel, he has turned his attention to a new topic—the complexities of a male-female relationship—and delivers a beautifully told story of love, loss, and redemption.

Set in contemporary New Orleans but working its way back in time, A Small Hotel chronicles t...more Author: Robert Olen Butler
Title: A Small Hotel
Description (source): Pulitzer Prize winner Robert Olen Butler has written fiction about far-ranging topics including hell, extraterrestrials, and the Vietnam War. With A Small Hotel, his twelfth novel, he has turned his attention to a new topic—the complexities of a male-female relationship—and delivers a beautifully told story of love, loss, and redemption.

Set in contemporary New Orleans but working its way back in time, A Small Hotel chronicles the relationship between Michael and Kelly Hayes, who have decided to separate after twenty years of marriage. The book begins on the day that the Hays are to finalize their divorce. Kelly is due to be in court, but instead she drives from her home in Pensacola, Florida, across the panhandle to New Orleans and checks into Room 303 at the Olivier House in the city’s French Quarter—the hotel where she and Michael fell in love some twenty years earlier and where she now finds herself about to make a decision that will forever affect her, Michael, and their nineteen-year-old daughter, Samantha.

Butler masterfully weaves scenes of the present with memories from both the viewpoint of Michael and Kelly—scenes that span twenty years, taking the reader back to critical moments in the couple’s relationship and showing two people deeply in love but also struggling with their own insecurities and inabilities to express this love.

An intelligent, deeply moving, and remarkably written portrait of a relationship that reads as a cross between a romance novel and a literary page turner, A Small Hotel is a masterful story that will remind readers once again why Robert Olen Butler has been called the “best living American writer” (Jeff Guinn, Fort Worth Star-Telegram). (Marketing copy)
Review source: netgalley
Plot: There’s nothing extraneous in the plot of this book, which I read in an evening. The novel centers tightly around the two protagonists; even their daughter only appears in a couple of scenes. Nonetheless, once I realized what Kelly was up to, I couldn’t put the book down.
Characters: Michael and Kelly are the married/divorcing couple. The only other characters are their daughter and their extramarital love interests—Michael’s new girlfriend is a fairly prominent character. Both Michael and Kelly are sympathetic and I was rooting for both of them. Nonetheless, I found it difficult to believe that any man could really be as clueless/messed up as Michael.
Writing style: This is my first novel by Butler. He tells the story from both Kelly’s and Michael’s points of view, and there are lots of flashbacks (note: in my galley copy on kindle, flashbacks sometimes occurred without even a paragraph break, making it a little hard to follow sometimes. I hope that will be fixed in the final copy!)
Audience: I would call this literary fiction, though I would think it would be less likely that a man would pick it up (or enjoy it).
Wrap-up: Much of the book is set in the French Quarter and around New Orleans; since I was just there a week ago, I really enjoyed the setting; Butler captured the French Quarter very well. I had to read this book in one sitting, which is unusual for me, so that gives it extra points. 4/5*
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Jun 17, 2011 Kathy Hiester rated it 5 of 5 stars

A Small Hotel is the story of how of Michael and Kelly Hays fell in love, got married, lived their lives and then fell apart.

Michael is a lawyer who has been raised to believe that simply by "being there" he has expressed his emotions therefore creating a very isolated adult. He is a product of an emotionally distant father who taught him that words are just words with no meaning behind them.

Kelly is a woman who has an emotional intensity that needs to hear the words from her husband but she ne...more

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Jan 27, 2013 Donna rated it 4 of 5 stars

How to describe this book? To quote a famous line from the movie, Cool Hand Luke: "What we've got here is failure to communicate." Oh, and so much more. We have destructive patterns learned in childhood repeating themselves, forming a vicious cycle, dooming the main characters to fail in their marriage and beyond.

I find it difficult to review this book without separating it into two parts, first the structure of the book, then the story, itself. As for the structure, it's told in third person by...more How to describe this book? To quote a famous line from the movie, Cool Hand Luke: "What we've got here is failure to communicate." Oh, and so much more. We have destructive patterns learned in childhood repeating themselves, forming a vicious cycle, dooming the main characters to fail in their marriage and beyond.

I find it difficult to review this book without separating it into two parts, first the structure of the book, then the story, itself. As for the structure, it's told in third person by a narrator who virtually acts as a director for a screenplay, reading the story off the page, scene by scene. It's both bizarre and brilliant. Here is one example of what I mean: "He lowers the trunk and gently clicks it shut. He turns to her and she is kissing him hard on the mouth and he is fine with bodies, fine with using the language of the body, and he presses her close and the kiss goes on and then ends and they break." All that is left to be said is "Cut!" by the director, or so it seems. Another thing about the way the book is structured, is that it is presented like one long screen shot, something like the Alfred Hitchcock movie, Rope, with one scene melting into another, going back and forth between what is happening to the two main characters in the present as they recall the past. Which brings me to the story.

This is a very complex way of telling a very simple story. Michael and Kelly's marriage of twenty years is about to end, just as soon as Kelly appears in court and signs the divorce papers. But she fails to show up. Instead, she has gone to a hotel room where she and her husband made many memories over the years, good and bad. Accompanying her are two bottles of booze and one bottle of pills. Meanwhile, her husband Michael is waiting for word that the divorce has gone through so he can take his new girlfriend to bed. But nothing is as easy to interpret as it might seem. Little by little, through shared memories shown by Michael and Kelly's divergent points of view, the reader sees glimpses of their childhoods, starring the dysfunctional relationships with their fathers, glimpses of how they met, how they came to be married, how the marriage eroded. In other words, where it all went wrong. It is a story of needs unmet and needs fulfilled that have destructive consequences. I won't be more specific or I would spoil the unfolding of all that is revealed.

This is a tense read where I sometimes had to remind myself to breathe. If you want to know why and know more, read the book. It is short, but intense. And it sure is different.
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Sep 05, 2011 Renee rated it 4 of 5 stars

A Small Hotel is set in New Orleans but works its way back in time and chronicles the relationship between Michael and Kelly Hays, who have decided to divorce after 24 years of marriage. The book begins on the day that the Hays are to finalize their divorce. Kelly is due to be in court, but instead she drives from her home in Florida to NO and checks into Room 303 at the Olivier House -the hotel where she and Michael fell in love some twenty-five years earlier and where she now finds herself abo...more

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May 25, 2011 Elizabeth B rated it 5 of 5 stars

Being speechless after reading a book certainly makes it hard to write a coherent review but I’m going to do my best. While this book deals with a married couple, I think everyone who has come to the ending of a failed relationship can relate to this story: the melancholy, the outsider interference, the fog that envelopes you and keeps you physically moving forward in the world while remaining emotional adrift.

When first starting the book, I was worried about the “flashbacks” that were mentione...more

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Sep 06, 2011 K.R.H. marked it as to-read

on oprah's list
On the official last day of her 20-year marriage, Kelly Hays sits in a New Orleans hotel room alone amid bottles of Scotch while her husband, Michael, checks into a different hotel with a sexy, decades-younger woman. But wait—don't take sides yet. Both husband and wife in Robert Olen Butler's deliciously, unapologetically romantic novel, A Small Hotel (Grove/Atlantic), are decent people in agony over their ruined love. Their emotions are complex, though hardly subtle. Michael wist...more

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Jul 18, 2011 Cynthia rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: books-read-in-2011

Confused by Love

In one evening a couple relives their entire life together. As young people they met in Louisiana at Mardi Gras and immediately felt an affinity. Over the next 25 years life happens and cracks begin to open. Work, parenting and their scars from childhood intervene. Michael’s harsh, unexpressive father taught him not to share what’s in his heart. It’s not manly. Kelly can’t help wondering why her mentally ill father is so distant. Then they both meet other people who seduce them a...more

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Aug 25, 2012 Craig Pittman rated it 4 of 5 stars

A wonderfully written short novel about a romantic triangle that becomes, as the New York Times put it, "an interrogation of the limitations and uses of language."

The principals are just three in number: Michael, a Pensacola lawyer who believes that loving someone means never having to say "I love you"; his wife Kelly, who instead of signing their divorce papers has driven to New Orleans with plans to commit suicide in the hotel where they first made love; and Michael's new girlfriend Laurie, w...more A wonderfully written short novel about a romantic triangle that becomes, as the New York Times put it, "an interrogation of the limitations and uses of language."

The principals are just three in number: Michael, a Pensacola lawyer who believes that loving someone means never having to say "I love you"; his wife Kelly, who instead of signing their divorce papers has driven to New Orleans with plans to commit suicide in the hotel where they first made love; and Michael's new girlfriend Laurie, who is 26 years his junior and firmly believes she can coax him into being the romantic partner she fantasizes about having. To that end, Laurie has persuaded Michael to accompany her to an old Louisiana plantation where they're having an ante-bellum fashion walk, and to dress up in period costume. The novel switches back and forth between the scenes of Kelly's anguish and Michael and Laurie's discussions, and as it does so Butler pulls off a neat trick, plunging each character backward into their own memories of what came before.

Some of the memories mesh together, and some conflict. Some are quite funny and some are sad and pathetic. But as Butler leads the reader along a path that goes both backward and forward in time, he slowly reveals who is at fault for the fracturing of this relationship, as well as showing why Laurie is likely to have the same problems with Michael as Kelly did.

As someone who grew up in Pensacola and has made my share of tourist visits to the Big Easy, I have to compliment Butler for his amazing accuracy in depicting not only the geography of these places but also the feel of being there in the heat of the summer. I actually had to go find and buy some beignets while reading this book.

Ultimately Butler's clever plot backs him into a narrative corner from which the only way out is either a turn toward devastating but predictable tragedy or a somewhat disappointing step into cliche territory, and Butler's choice is the latter. But that is the only letdown in a novel that all along the way is a marvelous and astonishing feat of writing and characterization. Highly recommended.(less)

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Jan 22, 2012 Patty rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: 2012, family, fiction, florida, contemporary-fiction, new-orleans, louisiana, divorce, marriage, husband-and-wife, southern-literature, relationships

My husband and I decided to spend a long weekend in New Orleans and so, in my librarian way, I looked for books to read about the city. It had been years since I had read anything by Robert Olen Butler and I had been reminded of his existence by a discussion of his early stories about Vietnamese immigrants. So when this book appeared on the NoveList bibliography, I decided it was the book for the trip.

Actually, it was not the book for this trip, but I am not sorry I read Butler's commentary on l...more

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Jan 10, 2013 R.P. McCabe rated it 5 of 5 stars

Another smash hit. But here's the thing about reading literature: There rarely is an explosion. Cops aren't running in every direction, serial killers or monsters or sifi planets aren't the story. Butler delivers in A Small Hotel exactly what he did in his Pulitzer novel and the tons of other award winning novels behind his name, literary prose telling us in moment by moment sensuous experience about humanity. This is a simple story of a husband dumping his wife for the younger woman. The wife a...more

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Jan 18, 2012 Troy Rosamond rated it 5 of 5 stars

A summary of my thoughts as I completed "A Small Hotel" which, by the way, is as fine an American novel as you'll ever run into. Especially if you are conscious about loving to swim in the distorted time/memories/present tense stream. Especially, also, if you are into suicide and divorce . . .
As human as it is to want, as real as what we know we want seems to be missing from what we have, as nagging and gnawing and energy-sucking as the prolonged absence of something critical and tangible seems...more

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Dec 28, 2011 Booker rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: greatamericanauthors

Robert Olen Butler's short volume flows back and forth between time and the memories of Kelly and Michael. Their relationship is complicated with their own family histories and deep rooted psychological issues. Kelly has escaped to a small hotel where Michael first rescued her decades earlier and which they have frequented over the years. Michael, meanwhile, is on the cusp of a new relationship with a much younger woman. Their missed cell phone calls back and forth help reinforce the small ways...more Robert Olen Butler's short volume flows back and forth between time and the memories of Kelly and Michael. Their relationship is complicated with their own family histories and deep rooted psychological issues. Kelly has escaped to a small hotel where Michael first rescued her decades earlier and which they have frequented over the years. Michael, meanwhile, is on the cusp of a new relationship with a much younger woman. Their missed cell phone calls back and forth help reinforce the small ways they have been missing signs of trouble in their relationship over a long period of time. Robert Olen Butler is as gifted a writer practicing today. While one may be tempted to read this trim volume quickly, there are whole pages and paragraphs that will cause the reader to stop and reread because of their beauty. A scene between Kelly and her father: She has heard already many times: you have your father's eyes. When she was toddling with language, a question forved inside her and she held it close to her for some days until one night at bedtime she stood before her father, ready to go off with her mother, and she was seeking the ritual kiss, which he would give her on the forehead, but before he even began to lean toward her in his deliberate, slow-motioned way, she asked him the question at last, "Daddy, do I have your eyes?" And he did not say a word. Instead he pulled her hands out before her and turned them them over, palms upward, and he reached with his own right hand and plucked at his eye, closing it at once, smooth-lidded, and he doubled the hand into a gentle fist, and he held the fist over her left hand and opened it, and then he closed his hand. And he did this with the other eye, just the same way, and after he closed her other hand and both his eyes had vanished before her, she dared not move: she had his eyes, she had them in the palms of her hands--she could feel their shape, their weight, there---and she did not move, and she barely let herself draw a breath, and they stood there before each other for what felt to Kelly like a very long time, and after a while she began to tremble from what she held, from what she was responsible for.

I am confident you'll be hard pressed to find a more beautiful passage between father and daughter.(less)

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Jan 02, 2013 Tani Boyer rated it 4 of 5 stars

I read this nearly a year ago so the review will be deficient in its description. But I do remember how this book made me feel and that's what is most important. I remember the magical feeling of that New Orleans backdrop...the small hotel room...her suitcase. I remember the way the couple's phone calls made me feel- like I wanted to speak for them, help them say what they wanted to say to each other. I remember the way I felt at the end (stomach dropping, tears falling, pitter patter of my hear...more

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Apr 02, 2011 Vivian rated it 4 of 5 stars

This is the story of Michael and Kelly Hays. It tells us of how they met, married, lived and fell apart.

Michael is a lawyer and an emotionally distant man. He has been raised to believe that simply by "being there" he has expressed his emotions. This is learned behavior from his emotionally distant father. His father also teaches him that saying "I love you" is nothing more than words.

Kelly is a woman who deeply feels and needs to hear the words from her husband but never pushes him to say thos...more This is the story of Michael and Kelly Hays. It tells us of how they met, married, lived and fell apart.

Michael is a lawyer and an emotionally distant man. He has been raised to believe that simply by "being there" he has expressed his emotions. This is learned behavior from his emotionally distant father. His father also teaches him that saying "I love you" is nothing more than words.

Kelly is a woman who deeply feels and needs to hear the words from her husband but never pushes him to say those three little words. Over the course of their 25 year marriage she begins to despair as she realizes that she needs those words to affirm who she is. This is perhaps due to her father's emotional distance and mental problems experienced during her own childhood.

We are allowed to see the experiences that have impacted on both Michael and Kelly through numerous flashbacks. One minute Kelly is sitting in a hotel room alone and the next she is at the beginning of her relationship with Michael, and then it is 10 years later or perhaps only a few months in the past. Kelly has left Pensacola FL on her way to a small hotel in New Orleans LA to remember and end it all. This hotel is where Kelly and Michael initially consummated their relationship and returned numerous times over the course of their marriage. Both she and Michael consider room 303 to be their room, and it is here she will end her life without Michael much as it began with him 20+ years earlier.

Meanwhile Michael is suffering from his own personal demons as he reflects on his childhood and marriage. He is only a few miles away in Mississippi, attending a costume ball with his new love interest Laurie. Laurie is 29 years old, only a few years older than Michael's daughter, and she has romanticized Michael's need for quiet. Regrettably she doesn't truly understand him or his inability to say much outside of the courtroom.

The irony is that both Michael and Kelly are more alike than they may know. Even though Kelly confesses to an affair, she never says that she wants her marriage to end. And Michael pushes through the divorce without ever saying that he wants the marriage to continue. To his mind, if Kelly wants to stay she should say so without coercion. Kelly feels that Michael should be able to say those three little words without coercion.

Mr. Butler has deftly woven a tale of longing that ultimately reveals that men and women are more alike then perhaps they realize. It is sometimes sad without being depressingly so and always realistic. Look for A Small Hotel to be released in July of this year. I'm definitely adding this to my to-be-purchased and read-again lists.

I thank both the publisher Grove Press and netGalley for the opportunity to read and review this book.
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Apr 30, 2012 Mary rated it 5 of 5 stars

I liked this book so much that I reviewed it on Amazon.com where you can see what others thinks as well. Here is what I said on Amazon:

Robert Olen Butler has written an eloquent novel that explores the interior lives, the childhoods, the way we were loved and accepted, human and flawed--that past--we each bring to a marriage. To do this, his story moves seamlessly between his two main characters, separated by location but joined by interior monologue. That interior work makes the reader see the...more

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Sep 10, 2011 Michelle rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: 2011

Book that takes place over one evening with flashbacks to prior years and events. Michael is at a fancy dress party with his new, much younger girlfriend (it’s not what you think) and his almost-ex-wife is at a “small hotel,” in a room they went to often in their marriage. The writing in this is wonderful but it starts out slow, very slow. Paragraphs are pages long without breaks and the book doesn’t have chapters either. However, at a certain point, midway through perhaps, I was taken in by thi...more

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Mar 13, 2012 Cameling rated it 3 of 5 stars

Starting with the day their divorce is to be finalized in court, the story of Kelly and Michael, alternate between the present and the past. Set in New Orleans, we're taken to the small hotel in which Kelly and Michael's relationship began more than 20 years ago and then back to the present where there's a bottle of Scotch and a bottle of pills in Room 303.

The author's method of switching time periods delivers memories of both Kelly and Michael very successfully and we gradually understand not j...more

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Sep 22, 2011 Tim Cummings rated it 4 of 5 stars

Robert Olen Butler is one of my favorite writers. He is a literary champion, and I love all of his books. This was no exception. It was darker and more contemplative than some of his quirkier stuff (Hell, Mr. Spaceman, Tabloid Dreams, etc) but that doesn't mean it was any less affecting. One of my favorite things about this book was the almost 'stream-of-consciousness' writing he did throughout; there were some sentences that went on for multiple pages. And I didn't even realize it until it was...more

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Jan 04, 2012 Sheila rated it 3 of 5 stars

This book had 4 stars until the last two pages! I hate Hollywood endings and this one is bad. Up until that point it was a great book. It is a love story but really the story of a relationship and how people handle relationships. It is an intimate look at what is going on inside the minds of two people that love each other, think they understand each other, realize they ultimate don't and muddle through anyway. In life and in love we do the best we can. We are affected by our experiences and we...more

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Aug 18, 2011 Linda rated it 4 of 5 stars

This novel of the breakup of a long term marriage reads as a window into the private thoughts of the couple involved. The reader is pulled right into the midst of the dysfunctional childhoods, initially happy then stale marriage, and eventual demise of the relationship. I really enjoyed the style, a sort of stream of consciousness of thoughts, just as we think about one topic after another throughout our days. It should be particularly appealing to women "of a certain age" suffering crises of co...more

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May 16, 2013 Cathay rated it 4 of 5 stars

Slow to start, but this story weaves through the lives of three; a man and two women, one who is just about to sign the divorce papers from him (Michael) and the other anticipating spending the rest of her life with him. What I appreciated was the insightful way the author links events in the past with his or her present reaction to situations. What is essential is the author's ability to give life to Michael's struggle for self-awareness, to know that what is said or not said can have such impa...more

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May 14, 2013 Jp rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: recently-read

Insightful; extremely well-written. I loved that Butler's narrative showed the same events, as emotionally experienced by each spouse. He juxtaposed their understanding of each shared experience through the prism of each one's flawed and baggage-laden perspective. I found it to be both ordinary and profoundly sensitive; masterfully done, but with a light hand. Interestingly, most of my book club "hated" it; they thought the protagonists should just have communicated their needs & "gotten ove...more

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Sep 21, 2011 Brittany rated it 4 of 5 stars

I found a "Small Hotel" to be a very realistic and heartbreaking portrayal of a couple's life leading up to the dissolution of their marriage. The novel tells the story of their marriage through flashbacks that span the years and bring us back to the present time on the day their divorce is supposed to be final. Although the demise of a marriage is sad,I found Michael's inability to to say the words I love you to his wife or daughter to be the saddest reality of the situation. I sympathize with...more

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About Robert Olen Butler

“I’ll never stop believing it: Robert Olen Butler is the best living American writer, period.”
– Jeff Guinn, Fort Worth Star-Telegram

Robert Olen Butler has published eleven novels which includes The Alleys of Eden, Sun Dogs, Countrymen of Bones, On Distant Ground, Wabash, The Deuce, They Whisper, The Deep Green Sea, Mr. Spaceman, Fair Warning, and Hell, as well as five volumes of short fiction; Tab...more

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From Where You Dream: The Process of Writing Fiction

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A Small Hotel

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