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The Pink Hotel

by Anna Stothard (Goodreads Author)

3.2 of 5 stars 3.20 · rating details · 233 ratings · 61 reviews

A seventeen-year-old London girl flies to Los Angeles for the funeral of her mother Lily, from whom she had been separated in her childhood. After stealing a suitcase of letters, clothes and photographs from her mum's bedroom at the top of a hotel on Venice Beach, the girl spends her summer travelling around Los Angeles returning love letters and photographs to the men who...more

Paperback, 280 pages

Published February 16th 2012 by Alma Books Ltd (first published April 1st 2011)

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Aug 05, 2012 Goddess Of Blah rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

What I noticed about the book is that I couldn't remember the protagonist's name. Even though I've only just finished the book. I suspect its because her name is never mentioned in the book. However, I could be wrong. It just felt odd thinking of her as the teenage girl. She's not quite anonymous. But she is nameless. A drifter with a strangled identity.

Occasionally, I do feel that that there is a reoccurring theme with young female authors, a sort of rite of passage that (a few unfortunately f...more What I noticed about the book is that I couldn't remember the protagonist's name. Even though I've only just finished the book. I suspect its because her name is never mentioned in the book. However, I could be wrong. It just felt odd thinking of her as the teenage girl. She's not quite anonymous. But she is nameless. A drifter with a strangled identity.

Occasionally, I do feel that that there is a reoccurring theme with young female authors, a sort of rite of passage that (a few unfortunately follow), before they mature into their writing... This "theme" appears to be an overriding ambition to manifest a jaded, worldly persona within their work which is depicted by casual sex, a hint of incest and the use of narcotics.

Overall, there are sufficient exceptional and intriguing aspects to the novel which make it worth reading. Such as the protagonists observations of her surroundings and of those whom she encounters which is quite refreshing. The prose isn't heavy or banal. The little details she includes in her description of LA, (an LA that isn't always portrayed in films) is fascinating to read. The Armenian community was particularly interesting to read about.

However, there were a few inconsistencies within the book such as
(a) Lily is mistaken to be either extremely young (10 years old by a woman called Julie), or looking old enough to liaise intimately with men much older than her, without them troubling themselves much with her age (as well as a certain male character remarking on what appears to be the appearance of premature aging (lines around her eyes))
(b) a few of the American characters appeared to have English characteristics at times, and
(c) the character of Richard, whose letters belied an image of a man who was nothing but a petty criminal. Perhaps that was the aim of the book - that banal proverb that "nothing is at it seems" or "don't judge a book by its cover"

I think the ending was rather vague - it finished abruptly as though though the author didn't know how to end it without it turning into a "happily forever" type of novel.
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Apr 23, 2013 Anne rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Despite the title and the cover, this novel is not 'pink and fluffy' chick lit, it is an intelligent, emotional and very cleverly written story about a young British girl's experience in America. It's about finding out about yourself and where you come from and facing up to life and discovering just who you are.

Lily left her daughter many years ago, just ran away and was never heard from again. When her daughter hears that Lily has died, she steals money from her Dad and books a ticket to Americ...more

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Jun 06, 2013 Linda rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I was sent an uncorrected Digital Galley of The Pink Hotel, by Anna Stothard by NetGalley.com in return for my thoughts and feedback.

The novel started off well and captured my attention from the first page. The narrator of the story was a seventeen year old British girl who when the story opens was attending a drug and alcohol fueled party in California at the Pink Hotel given in honor of the memory of her mother who abandoned the girl when she was three years old. Her mother died in a motorcyc...more

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Apr 05, 2013 Kara rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: netgalley

So here's the thing. I could write a really captivating review about how what I wanted from this book was so different from what I got, etc. etc. But at the end of the day it just boils down to this: the main character/narrator wasn't just unlikeable, she was unknowable.

An unnamed MC (I really hate that, btw) goes to LA for the funeral of the other she never knew, who abandoned her when she was about three. She ends up staying in LA to track down some of the people that knew her, old coworkers,...more

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Dec 20, 2012 Danielle Villano rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: 2012

(Taken from a review on my blog, The Reader's Commute):

As readers, we learn along with the narrator about the character that was Lily. We learn that “her bedroom reeked of cigarette ash and stale perfume” on the very first page. However, this small detail is not enough for the narrator, a girl who relishes in ample sleep and physical pain. Like someone who incessantly presses a bruise, the narrator delves deeper into the world that was her mother’s. She wears Lily’s clothes (even her underwear),...more (Taken from a review on my blog, The Reader's Commute):

As readers, we learn along with the narrator about the character that was Lily. We learn that “her bedroom reeked of cigarette ash and stale perfume” on the very first page. However, this small detail is not enough for the narrator, a girl who relishes in ample sleep and physical pain. Like someone who incessantly presses a bruise, the narrator delves deeper into the world that was her mother’s. She wears Lily’s clothes (even her underwear), reads her love letters, and pays visits to acquaintances and old lovers. She doesn’t seem to really care that she’s upsetting the balance of this world, or causing hurt to Lily’s husband, Richard (a dangerous, red-haired man). The narrator in The Pink Hotel is relentless. She fights on the soccer field, she repeats words that have “musical qualities,” and she continuously hounds people for information on Lily.

Even after she falls in love and begins living with David, a photographer who once knew her mother, the narrator cannot let go of her obsession. She lies to David and says that she has disposed of Lily’s clothing, and humors him while wearing the clothing he has picked out for her (the cardigans and skirts that David buys her do not reflect her personality - or the personality she wants to have - as much as Lily’s leather jacket and silk fuchsia dress). Saddest of all: David does not know that his new lover is Lily’s daughter.

The scenes between the narrator and David are heartbreaking and obsessive. She loves him, yet hurts him without his knowledge. He is a recovering alcoholic who sees some semblance of goodness in this young girl, and he wants to turn his life around. Meanwhile, the narrator has this desperate desire to feel something; she makes frequent mentions of injuries suffered, the game of pressing pressure points to facilitate fainting, and masochistic dreams she’s had where she is tied to a laundry machine for hours. In a pivotal argument scene with David, the narrator feels a rush of excitement when she thinks that David is going to hit her. She is left disappointed, and she suffers silently.

Everyone in The Pink Hotel suffers silently. David grapples with alcoholism and a secret sadness; Julie, a bartender, pushes away her emotions with heroin; the narrator’s grandmother suffers from a stroke that takes away her ability to speak. Despite all of this silence, this novel speaks volumes. The prose is gorgeous, full of unexpected descriptions that left me thinking: this is so true.

While some readers may be put-off by an unnamed narrator, I felt that I was really able to identify the narrator of The Pink Hotel as an individual. Her feelings, her vivid dreams, and her actions made her stand out. Like Emily Vidal in The Adults, she seems wise beyond her years. Her thoughts are complicated, beautiful, and sad. I think she will sit with me for a long time, and I look forward to a reread of The Pink Hotel. (less)

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Mar 13, 2011 Lucy Gold rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I have never been to LA, but this book left me with such a strong and haunting picture of the city: the reader comes away with not just the sights of Venice Beach, but the taste of it, the smell of it, burnt into mind.

The Pink Hotel is quite a strange and heady mix of a story, echoing perfectly the heady strangeness of its setting. There’s a fairy tale quality to the protagonist’s narration (she meets The Giant and the Red Haired Man), but this sweetness builds up into something unexpected; this...more

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Jun 14, 2013 Stefanie rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction, coming-of-age

I absolutely devoured this book from cover to cover - if I had started it earlier in the day, I would have easily finished it that same day. I found it to be not only well written, but completely mesmerizing.

At times harshly realistic, this is definitely not your typical coming of age story, but that was one of the reasons why I appreciated it so much. The unnamed protagonist is hard to understand at first and seems to be lacking clear emotions or motivation. But the more you learn about her li...more

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Mar 06, 2012 Zarina rated it 2 of 5 stars

A 17 year-old British girl runs away to the US after hearing that the mother she did not have any contact with, Lily, has passed away. Once in LA she tries to discover who her mother was and along the way she meets a wide array of colourful people.

It rarely happens I dislike a main character as much as I did in the case of The Pink Hotel, what an annoying, bland and disconnected girl! And so many of her actions and the storylines didn't add up. For instance on one page a character tells her she...more

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Apr 10, 2013 Jaime Boler rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

In Anna Stothard’s candidly unflinching, evocative, and razor-sharp debut novel The Pink Hotel, the female protagonist is interested in creation stories and myths. The Epic of Gilgamesh, Noah’s flood, and the Aztec legend of “Coatlique” fascinate the astute and precocious 17-year-old British girl. And there’s a reason for her curiosity: her mother, Lily, left when she was only three. The girl desperately wants to know her own creation story, and her dad has never been forthcoming about the tale...more
In Anna Stothard’s candidly unflinching, evocative, and razor-sharp debut novel The Pink Hotel, the female protagonist is interested in creation stories and myths. The Epic of Gilgamesh, Noah’s flood, and the Aztec legend of “Coatlique” fascinate the astute and precocious 17-year-old British girl. And there’s a reason for her curiosity: her mother, Lily, left when she was only three. The girl desperately wants to know her own creation story, and her dad has never been forthcoming about the tale.

Stothard does not give her protagonist a name. Since Stothard tells the tale from the girl’s first-person perspective, perhaps Stothard did not feel the need to name the main character. It is a rather curious move. Naming and identity are so closely intertwined; because the narrator has no name, I never connect with her, I do not feel like I ever truly know her. For me, she is unknown, unknowable, and rather unlikeable. That is not to say that Stothard does not do a good job of fleshing out this individual—she does. But not giving the novel’s main personality a name bothered me immensely.

Yet I appreciated the main character’s mindset. Yearning for one’s mother is a universal concept that everyone can understand. The Pink Hotel begins when the girl gets news that her mother, who lived in Los Angeles, has been killed in a motorcycle accident. Stothard’s main character does not think of the consequences; she is 17, after all, and frantic over the prospect that she will never know her mother now that she is dead.

As she explains, “Presumably most people can conjure an image of their mother from childhood, but my memories are either from photographs or they’re physical. I can’t imagine what she used to look like, but remember fragments of her holding my hand too tight in a supermarket, the texture of her legs when I grabbed them….” So she decides to travel to Los Angeles, where her mother owned “The Pink Hotel” in Venice Beach with her second husband.

For the young girl, her journey is really a pilgrimage. When she arrives at the hotel for her mother’s wake, she sneaks into her bedroom and steals a red suitcase. She stuffs it full of her mother’s clothes, letters, and pictures. The girl flees the hotel after encountering her mother’s current husband. With a stolen credit card and little money, the main character sets out finding the people her mother knew in hopes of learning more about the woman who left all those years ago.

In an effort to get closer to her mother, the protagonist seems to take on the role of her mother. “I’m not Lily” she says, while wearing her mother’s “tight black dress and her red stilettos.” “Are you as good at lying as you are at storytelling” a character asks her. And she is quite adept at telling falsehoods, but not to the reader, only to others. You would think this quality would endear her to the reader; alas, it does not.

The Pink Hotel is peopled by a quirky cast of characters. Some of my absolute favorites are the Armenian women she meets. “How did you come to America?” the girl asks one of them. “My twin sister and I,” the woman replies, “weren’t interested in marrying men named Noah, you know?”

Stothard chooses the perfect setting for her characters and for the story. In fact, it is setting that drives The Pink Hotel and its characters. The author perfectly captures the essence of Southern California to create an atmospheric tale that would not have worked anywhere else. With lines like “If the Atlantic was a foaming, snapping Rottweiler, the Pacific was a sleepy gecko in the sunlight,” Stothard grabs you and puts you in the middle of the story.

Sense of place is so important in The Pink Hotel. The setting is what saved this story for me when I did not connect to the narrator. Stothard writes, “Los Angeles isn’t built for the rain, and everyone panics. The air gets saturated with ambulance sirens as oil rises up through the suddenly soaked tarmac highways, causing crashes.” “The heatwave had finally ignited, and LA had a halo of fire over it.”
Descriptions such as these make The Pink Hotel compelling and worth reading.

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Jan 17, 2011 For Books' Sake rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

The Pink Hotel picks up on similar themes of obsession to Anna Stothard's debut novel Isabel and Rocco, using the dirty glamour of Los Angeles as background.

The first-person narrative and a text rich with witty and entertaining dialogue make it a smooth and easy read despite some of the darker subject matter. Characters discuss everything from jellyfish and treasured words to their experiences of Lily, revealing more about their own eccentricities in the process.

The Pink Hotel is a self-assured...more

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Oct 04, 2012 Regina rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

After finding out that her mother has dies, Lily travels to LA. After getting to LA, Lily steals a suitcase full of belongings from her mother and travels around the city trying to get more information about her bilogical mother.

So, this book was not exactly what it says on the synopsis. I was expecting a normal girl as the main character, but it was so unlike what I had in mind. Lily had a ver strange imagination and she was sleeping with her mother's ex boyfriends, who were so much older than...more

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Mar 25, 2012 CuteBadger rated it 2 of 5 stars

A 17-year-old London girl flies to Los Angeles on the spur of the moment to attend the wake of the mother she never knew. Rather than going straight home afterwards, she tries to find out about her mother's life by tracking down the men she'd had relationships with.

I found it difficult to relate to this novel's main character, as we never find out what her name is, and she has such difficulty in relating to herself. So although the narrative is written in the first person and the reader is insi...more

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Mar 26, 2012 Sharon rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: read-2012

When I saw on the Waterstones Facebook page that they were looking for reviewers for this book I decided to apply for a copy to see what it was like as not one I had heard of before and probably not a book I would have picked myself.

The story begins with the young girl (we never do get to find out what her name is!) turning up in the middle of the wake for her mother, Lily, at the hotel she had run with her husband. She wanders around apparently unnoticed and then walks upto her mother's bedroo...more

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May 09, 2013 Renee rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

While I finished this book in 2 days, and found it a good read, it left me kind of empty. It wasn't one of those books that I put down and thought, "that was fantastic" or the desire to tell all my friends they need to read it. I had read a review on Salon.com of how fantastic the book was, with a huge twist ending. Um, while I was surprised, it certainly wasn't a jaw dropper or anything that shocked me.

The writing is really great. Anna Stothard's storytelling is so descriptive that it really do...more

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Jan 26, 2013 Jayne Charles rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I liked the unusual scenario of this novel - seventeen year old girl, the result of a teenage pregnancy, travels to Los Angeles on the trail of her estranged and recently dead mother. I liked the grit underlying the story as we hear in small bursts about the protagonist's upbringing in London and the effects of having been abandoned by her mother at the age of 3.

We never get to learn her name (yawn). I suppose the case could be made in a novel about finding one's identity for using this literary...more

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Apr 23, 2013 Helen Barlow rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: netgalley-arc-s

THE PINK HOTEL follows the journey of an unnamed 17 year old girl on her first trip away from home after learning her mother, Lily (who left her as a young child) was killed in a motorcycle accident near Los Angeles. The protagonist shows up at Lily's wake not knowing a thing about her and owning just a single photo of herself with her mother. She proceeds to fill a suitcase with clothes, letters and photos that belonged to Lily in an attempt to learn more about the mother that abandoned her. Sh...more THE PINK HOTEL follows the journey of an unnamed 17 year old girl on her first trip away from home after learning her mother, Lily (who left her as a young child) was killed in a motorcycle accident near Los Angeles. The protagonist shows up at Lily's wake not knowing a thing about her and owning just a single photo of herself with her mother. She proceeds to fill a suitcase with clothes, letters and photos that belonged to Lily in an attempt to learn more about the mother that abandoned her. She has a strange relationship with her father back in the U.K. and I found it odd that he didn't make attempts to bring her home.

Along the way, she meets a number of people connected to her mother Richard - Lily's husband, Julie - Lily's friend and ex-employer, and David - a paparazzo and former fashion photographer. After learning that Lily was a model and photographed by David, she forges a relationship with him, thinking that he is the key to discovering more details about her mother. She doesn't tell him that Lily was her mother, instead attempts to find out how and how well he knew her.

She skips her flight home to the U.K. instead moving in with David, and finding a job. Not calling her father until she needs money for the flight home.

One of the reasons the main character travels to LA in the first place is to go to the place of her mother's accident, but it takes weeks, maybe months, (and almost the entire book) for her to get there. A lot of the story in between seemed unnecessary and when I finished the book, the ending seemed rushed and incomplete. Instead of the trials and tribulations between arriving in L.A. and venturing to the location of her mother's accident, I think the author should have expanded the ending.

I found this book just about readable, I think in part from being unable to connect with a main character whose name is never mentioned. I also felt that the ending left the story incomplete, it seemed rushed and even though I didn't particularly enjoy the book I wanted to know more. Also the fact that she was able to skip her flight home and remain in the U.S. working was unbelievable.(less)

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Mar 22, 2012 Annabelle rated it 2 of 5 stars

I received this book from Waterstones to review.

I think the synopsis of the book is incredibly wrong. Indeed she, does go to LA but she doesn’t attend the funeral instead she breaks into the hotel which her mother owned and steals a suitcase full of her mother’s stuff. After she escapes a close encounter with her mother’s new husband she decides to find one person who was mentioned in the suitcase. Not lots of people like it states in the synopsis. After reading this book I still don’t see how...more I received this book from Waterstones to review.

I think the synopsis of the book is incredibly wrong. Indeed she, does go to LA but she doesn’t attend the funeral instead she breaks into the hotel which her mother owned and steals a suitcase full of her mother’s stuff. After she escapes a close encounter with her mother’s new husband she decides to find one person who was mentioned in the suitcase. Not lots of people like it states in the synopsis. After reading this book I still don’t see how she was meant to be re-enacting her mother’s life. Sure she goes and visits people her mother knew, and even sleeps with two of her mother’s ex-boyfriends. It was a seriously messed up book, just like the back drop of LA.

I want to say I tried to like this book but I didn’t from the start and I had to force myself to finish it so I could review it properly. I even ended up reading another book while I was currently reading this; I just didn’t like it at all. The main character, who I can’t even remember her name, wasn’t very likeable, she just saw everything wrong in the world. She moans about wanting to be invisible but then she puts on her mother’s dresses and struts around LA. She was slightly annoying. Something’s that she said I agreed with like noticing small details of things others look over. But obviously this was the author’s way with words which we didn’t see flowing well together too often. There was about one chapter which I liked and it made me feel something other than being bored. Wise maybe.

The one thing I have to say is that this book reminded me of The Catcher in the Rye for some reason and I didn’t like that book either. I wouldn’t recommend this book to anyone. I feel bad for writing a bad review but I have to tell others that this isn’t a good book. It’s certainly one I will never pick up again. The only good part of this book was the last few chapters where the story actually kicked in and pulled the reader’s attention and kept it. Therefore I can and will only give this book 2 Stars.
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Dec 28, 2011 Marguerite Kaye rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I loved this. The language was incredible, the descriptions of the main protagonist's imagination and dream life were eery, fantastical and frightingly resonating. This is a romance in one sense, but in another it's a new take on the classic coming of age novel like Salinger's Catcher in the Rye - though it's definitely not a YA book. The descriptions of LA were nightmarish and at the same time attractive, and a million miles from what we're usually given. No celeberities, no glamour, the violen...more

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Apr 01, 2012 Jim rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

A seventeen-year-old London girl flies to Los Angeles for the funeral of her mother Mandy, from whom she had been separated in her childhood. After stealing a suitcase of letters, clothes and photographs from her mum's bedroom at the top of a hotel on Venice Beach, the girl spends her summer travelling around Los Angeles returning love letters and photographs to the men who had known her mother. As she discovers more about Mandy's past and tries to re-enact her life, she comes to question the fo...more

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Jan 13, 2013 Carla rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: artistic, best-books-i-ve-read, books-that-have-changed-me-as-a-per, recommend, road-trips, romantic

This book was amazing. It was amazing in a different way, but it still was. I found out about it last October in Berlin where I saw it in a bookshop. It captivated me from the beginning. Now I have read it on my kindle back home :)

This book is totally different, yet captivating and really descriptive. I loved "being in LA for some days". The author describes LA so good that it really felt as if had been there for some days.

This story is about an English girl who wants to find out who her dead m...more

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Aug 07, 2012 Pip rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

This book was set in Los Angeles and had a great sense of place. The colours were very vivid, you could taste the salt in the air, and see the shiny people living there. A teenage girl, raised by her father in London, finds out that her mother has died. She steals her father's credit card and takes off to LA, arriving just in time for a debauched funeral. She joins in, which starts a chain of interaction with old lovers and friends of her mother. She slowly pieces together her mother's life and...more

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Apr 16, 2013 Eve Mitts rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I thought the story was enchanting. And one I could not put down. I drifted away with the character, (though in no way did she seem 17 years old) and was fully involved in her plight. I do wonder if it was made more powerful to me personally because of the similarities I have with the young girl but I'd doubt you'd need a fleeting ghost of a mother to be overcome by the story. Superb narrative and an imaginative, descriptive quality with well researched bindings of reality throughout.

Chapter 10...more

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May 12, 2013 Kris rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I received this book from the goodreads giveaways and read the book in one day. The imagery in this book is cloud 9. You must read this book with an open mind and a great sense of imagination to really appreciate its creativity. My favorite books are ones that have a strong main character in which the reader can emotionally connect with and leave you rooting for them until the very end, this was one of those books. I didn't identify with the invisibility of the character, but what I found myself...more

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Jul 07, 2012 Rachel rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: 2012, couldn-t-put-down

I've loved this book, it had a particular atmosphere which is hard to pin down. There is such an ethereal quality to the writing somehow; even when describing a heroin junkie or a burnt out houses on a stretch of road surrounded by desert it's dreamlike and other worldly.
The heroine is not typical in any sense but you end up really caring and hoping that everything comes right for her.
I've been to some of the areas described in the book and I can well imagine its an accurate portrayal of the s...more

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Mar 03, 2012 Joanne rated it 4 of 5 stars

This was an interesting little book, one I picked up by chance in the library, a little different from my usual books, but something attracted me to it, and it held my attention throughout. It was the story of a 17 yr old girl, who stole her father's credit card and ran off to LA when she was notified of her mother's death. There, she stole a suitcase and tried to piece together the life of her mother, who abandoned her at 3. I thought it was brilliantly written, wonderfully descriptive, and it...more

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Jul 31, 2012 Mary Lou rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Following a phone call informing her of the death of her young mother in LA (whom she has never known), a seventeen year old flies over for the funeral and becomes caught up in the lives of her mother's eclectic handful of friends

This is a book I checked out at random in the library, on the basis of the praise on the front cover. (If its good enough for Helen Dunmore its certainly good enough for me.) I found it a very good read. The story flows beautifully, the no-shade feel of LA pervades, and...more

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Jul 07, 2012 Sophia rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Our protagonist is unnamed throughout the book, but she's an 18-year-old girl from London who was abandoned by her teenage mother, Lily, when she was just a baby. Her young father did his best to bring her up well, but it's obvious that she has some problems - irrational fears, bad dreams, and a liking for physical pain are enough to tip us off there. When she receives a phone call from a hospital in America to say her long-lost mother has died, she steals her stepmother's credit card and books...more Our protagonist is unnamed throughout the book, but she's an 18-year-old girl from London who was abandoned by her teenage mother, Lily, when she was just a baby. Her young father did his best to bring her up well, but it's obvious that she has some problems - irrational fears, bad dreams, and a liking for physical pain are enough to tip us off there. When she receives a phone call from a hospital in America to say her long-lost mother has died, she steals her stepmother's credit card and books a flight to Los Angeles.

Our heroine's first stop is the hotel her mother owned with her husband, where various unsavoury characters are enjoying a wake in Lily's honour, involving plenty of drunkenness, promiscuity and drug taking. It sets the tone for the rest of the novel, as Miss X sets about finding out more about her mother by getting to know some of the sleazy individuals she called friends.

This book wasn't for me I'm afraid, but I disliked it for entirely personal reasons and could appreciate its good qualities. The writing is excellent and so descriptive that I was instantly transported to the seamy side of L.A. It had a real cinematic quality, and ironically it was probably the fact that it was so good at whisking me off to such a nasty place that made me dislike it, or at least dislike the experience of reading it. Reading The Pink Hotel made me feel a bit grimy, and it was nice to put it down and be home in drizzly but cosily familiar Bournemouth again.

The characters are a motley assortment of wasters, druggies, small-time gangsters and thieves, and even our protagonist was such a strange and damaged girl that it was difficult to like or care about her. I'm not one of those people that thinks all books should be lovely and fluffy, but I do like at least one character whose thoughts and feelings I can connect with, even if they're not a conventionally "nice" person. Miss No-Name was just not doing that for me.

The plot is best described as episodic. Miss No-Name meets various ex-husbands and friends in turn, has perfunctory sex with a couple of them, phones her dad back in England, runs away a lot and leads a rather aimless life during her extended stay in L.A. There was an excellent plot twist at the end of the book which I appreciated and hadn't predicted at all, but I would have liked this to have been explored a little more to provide a better ending for the novel.

If you like gritty fiction with noir tendencies then you'd probably enjoy The Pink Hotel. It wasn't my cup of tea, but I appreciated its vividly evoked setting and high quality prose. (less)

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Nov 16, 2011 Katie rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

First off, I have to say that The Pink Hotel is not a YA book - but wait! It is still a genuinely fantastic read. For the first fifty pages I was just thinking that this was a 'meh' book. You know the type where it is a nice enough read but nothing about it makes you say "WOW". Well, at around fifty pages, things started to change.

Finally, this nameless girl started to get interesting to me. Her story began to really flesh out and I was hooked. This is where she meets August, her mothers first...more

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Jun 09, 2012 Ruthripple rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I really enjoyed this book. I felt it captured really well the loneliness and isolation of loss of the main protagonist on the cusp of adulthood. Unlike some other reviewers I really empathised with the main character, her sense of being in abandoned in different ways by both of her parents, her need to find out more about her dead mother, her lack of connection to others, her emotional numbness and journey to feeling and trusting again all hooked me in. This was a haunting yet hopeful read.

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May 19, 2011 Alison rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction

A bit strange! Story about a girl who travels to LA when she gets a phone call to say that her mother has died. her mother had her when she was 14 and left her with her father when she was just 4 years old. Quite why she gets a call is odd to start with but I guess she must have her listed as next of kin. Her mum turns out to have had a very colourful life and as some of the characters from Lily's past turn up for the wake and we get t know them - well all sort of strange things happen.
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About Anna Stothard

Anna Stothard was born in London, but has lived in Washington DC, Beijing and Los Angeles. Her second novel, The Pink Hotel, came out in 2011 and was longlisted for the 2012 Orange Prize.

She now lives in Chalk Farm, London. Her third novel, The Art of Leaving, is out March 2013. She also writes about travel for The Observer Magazine.

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