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The White Hotel
by
D.M. Thomas
It is a dream of electrifying eroticism and inexplicable violence, recounted by a young woman to her analyst, Sigmund Freud. It is a horrifying yet restrained narrative of the Holocaust. It is a searing vision of the wounds of our century, and an attempt to heal them. Interweaving poetry and case history, fantasy and historical truth-telling, The White Hotel is a modern cl
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Paperback, 240 pages
Published
December 2nd 1999
by Phoenix Press
(first published 1981)
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There's so much I could say about this book, but I haven't strayed into spoiler territory in a review before and I don't want to start now. More than with any novel I can think of that I've read, this is more than a sum of each part. For example, the fictional case history 'written' by the novel's Freud would mean nothing without the previous two sections 'written' by his patient; the same is true of the following sections relating her later life and that of the world at large, each with a Freud
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Really scandalous book that blends eroticism with violence and psychology to portray the horrors of the Holocaust. My English major roommate recommended it to me as his favorite book when I was working on my undergrad. After the first few chapters I was a little disturbed for him, haha. But when I reached the end I realized the powerful effect of the White Hotel. Entrancing, hypnotic, outrageous and multi-layered, this is a book you will not soon forget.
Well, that was weird.
It went from intensely sexual, to clinical, to narrative, to horrific, to just plain bizarre.
Spoiler: I think this might be a spoiler, but I wasn't exactly sure what was going on for the last 20 pages, so it might not be. It seemed like everyone was in heaven, or some kind of after-world, and the protagonist (I use that term veeeeeeeeeeery loosely) and her mother were taking a walk while reuniting and talking about a threesome witnessed by the child protagonist of her moth ...more
It went from intensely sexual, to clinical, to narrative, to horrific, to just plain bizarre.
Spoiler: I think this might be a spoiler, but I wasn't exactly sure what was going on for the last 20 pages, so it might not be. It seemed like everyone was in heaven, or some kind of after-world, and the protagonist (I use that term veeeeeeeeeeery loosely) and her mother were taking a walk while reuniting and talking about a threesome witnessed by the child protagonist of her moth ...more
There's a moment in Ernest Hemingway's novel To Have and Have Not which I thought was a real zinger at the time - we have been following Harry and his wife and their relationship intimately - they have some big financial problems but he loves her, and that's always good when a middle aged guy loves his wife don't you think, so you see her from his point of view. Then later you have a different narrator, some other guy, and he's driving along, maybe on his way to see Harry, and he sees this rando
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May 20, 2011
K.D. Absolutely
rated it
liked it
·
review of another edition
Recommended to K.D. by:
501 Must Read Books
Shelves:
501
Strange book.
Or maybe I am just not equipped to understand everything.
It is composed of a prologue and 6 chapters in almost different forms and themes: (1) epistolary introducing the main characters; (2) erotic fantasies told in poems; (3) erotic journal in first-person narrative; (4) case history in third-person plain storytelling; (5) clinical psychoanalysis; (6) holocaust; (7) outright bizarre conclusion.
I hate some parts of it not because it is boring but it is hard to understand. I had a 3 ...more
Or maybe I am just not equipped to understand everything.
It is composed of a prologue and 6 chapters in almost different forms and themes: (1) epistolary introducing the main characters; (2) erotic fantasies told in poems; (3) erotic journal in first-person narrative; (4) case history in third-person plain storytelling; (5) clinical psychoanalysis; (6) holocaust; (7) outright bizarre conclusion.
I hate some parts of it not because it is boring but it is hard to understand. I had a 3 ...more
When I attempted to read The White Hotel when it first came out, I was 14 and unable to get through it. I knew there was something much bigger at work but I couldn’t grasp the apparent profundity of the work. Now, at 45 years of age, I have read it from beginning to end and it is a truly spectacular piece of writing! I read for two hours before bed last night, unable to put the book down until I finished the last chapter, crying quietly. This book moved me as few others have and I am a voracious
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Theodor Adorno, in an oft-misappropriated quote, wrote that to compose poetry after Auschwitz is barbarism. Adorno did not, as it may initially seem, intend the Holocaust to signify the end of cultural creativity. Rather, it’s a remark that – against the broader critical landscape – inquires about reconciling a culture that produced Kant and Beethoven with the largest, most extensive, systematized killing in humanity’s history. There is a “tension between ethics and aesthetics inherent in an act ...more
Be careful picking this one up is not for the feint of heart, but if you need a "sense of proportion" in your life and a paradigm shift in thinking would do you good, give it a go. Read other peoples nicely crafted reviews if you want but I think its best to pick it up without a clue what its about.
Безсрамно добра творба. Зашеметяващи обрати, невероятни хитросплетения, сочен авторов език, без да е разточителен на думи. Цялата тази богата интертекстуалност те държи в плен до последната страница.
At the time of his conception of this novel, D.M. Thomas's thought process must have been along these lines:
I have yet to encounter any novel from any era that has done justice to the complexity of the human personality. I shall make my own attempt to portray a human personality true to its profound complexity, which to this point has been beyond the imaginings of other novelists.
The result is our immersion in the personality of Frau Lisa Erdman, an opera singer and at the outset a patient of Si ...more
I have yet to encounter any novel from any era that has done justice to the complexity of the human personality. I shall make my own attempt to portray a human personality true to its profound complexity, which to this point has been beyond the imaginings of other novelists.
The result is our immersion in the personality of Frau Lisa Erdman, an opera singer and at the outset a patient of Si ...more
RECIPE FOR THE SUCCESSFUL NOVEL:
Ingredients:
Take 30% sex
Take 20% Holocaust
Take 20% Freud
Take 10% death
Take 10% violence
Take 10% epistolarity
Spices: Add erotic poetry to spice up the meal and classical music to boost the price.
Be careful not to stir the ingredients together, each flavor should stand out on its own.
! Please be sure not to include any good writing, plot or an underlying message, as they will make the meal heavy and indigestible.
Happy reating!
Ingredients:
Take 30% sex
Take 20% Holocaust
Take 20% Freud
Take 10% death
Take 10% violence
Take 10% epistolarity
Spices: Add erotic poetry to spice up the meal and classical music to boost the price.
Be careful not to stir the ingredients together, each flavor should stand out on its own.
! Please be sure not to include any good writing, plot or an underlying message, as they will make the meal heavy and indigestible.
Happy reating!
I'm still not even sure if I like this book, but it gets five stars because after six years I'm still thinking about it, struggling to resolve it, admiring it for the kind of permission it gives other writers, wincing at how some passages could be so erotic while still enveloping the horror of genocide.
Quite a bit of this book is erotic, except for the bit where Jews (including our female protagonist and those she loves) get cruelly murdered holocaust-style. The author, a man, uses his female lead's voice to describe her hallucinatory fucking; he's a mighty apt transvestite. The author, born a Methodist, describes in graphic detail the slaughter of Jews; he ripped that stuff off from Anatoly Kuznetsov. That lousy quack Freud makes several appearances in the story, playing someone who mattered.
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Why do I keep reading books that utterly destroy me? I don't know. It starts off tacky and eye-rolly, like REALLY, FREUD, WE'RE GOING THERE, REALLY, and then transition via pomo surrealist folderol to unexpected gutpunch. Anyway somehow I didn't expect it, I lost track of history in all those orgy breastmilk scenes. NB that the train is not really going to Palestine. Gutted. Weeping for the last 40 pages. Share and enjoy!
Yhe Vision of Love Through Salvation, 19 Feb 2007
"Thomas takes us beyond Freud, beyond Eros and Thanatos, and thus challenges the very substance of the Freudian text. Within the analyses and, he suggests, buried within her individual neurosis, is the subtext of history--the Final Solution. And beyond the horror is the transcendent vision of salvation through love in the mythical state of Israel. In this bold, intellectually challenging novel, Thomas goes beyond both history and historical ficti ...more
Never mind how I managed to have this on the shelf in the first place, upon learning of its significance to Susan Orleans The White Hotel immediately jumped rank and became The Next Read.
It was not a contentious promotion.
To Susan Orleans, veritable author of The Orchid Thief, The White Hotel is one of 40 books that changed her world.
To me, veritable scribe of hope and vengeance, The White Hotel is one of the better books I’ve read in a while.
I’m not done with it yet and am not holding out much ...more
It was not a contentious promotion.
To Susan Orleans, veritable author of The Orchid Thief, The White Hotel is one of 40 books that changed her world.
To me, veritable scribe of hope and vengeance, The White Hotel is one of the better books I’ve read in a while.
I’m not done with it yet and am not holding out much ...more
Jan 22, 2013
Mareika
rated it
it was amazing
·
review of another edition
Shelves:
favorites,
disturbing
This book is not for everyone, but only due to explicit content and disturbing violence, not due to its message. It's not a feel-good novel, but it's a novel that gets your affective response kicking into high gear -- the type of novel that can change the world, because it makes you question how you think.
The White Hotel is creative, thought-provoking, and emotionally scarring. I didn't actually realize I liked it until I had put it down and thought/talked about it for a few days - Thomas tells ...more
The White Hotel is creative, thought-provoking, and emotionally scarring. I didn't actually realize I liked it until I had put it down and thought/talked about it for a few days - Thomas tells ...more
Most of this book bored me, I guess because I find the Freudian stuff dry as dust. The structure is interesting, consisting as it does of sections that are related but a little disjointed. Really, this seemed like two books with the ending section maybe being a separate novella. The first part is essentially a case study about a sexual hysteric that I thought was ridiculous, although some of the imagery in the first section was interesting. The second part was about the Holocaust. There was some
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Aug 30, 2010
Kate
added it
What can I say about a book that left me speechless for so long? It's front-loaded with graphic, morbid, aggressive, detached sexuality. I should clarify that the sexuality itself isn't morbid in nature but it's contrasted with morbid imagery occurring elsewhere simultaneously. Just when you think you've been offended enough, it switches gears. I read this book for my literary theory class and psychoanalysis describes this novel in which Feud himself is a character. It is not a novel about sex.
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I read this book many years ago, but still recall the gut-wrenching impact it had on me. The first part of the book is cool and dreamlike, descending into Freudian themes of sexuality that become almost too much to bear. There were times when I thought I might not be able to read on any further, but I did, and with each change in tone the book became more and more disturbing, and yet more and more of a revelation. The ending is hugely disturbing and incredibly powerful, and in a very rare occurr
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I used to be more patient, but I can't deal with tedious books anymore.
This book had a lot of promise and the premise was interesting.
The writing is beautiful.
However, about 100 pages into it, with no hope of plot or character development,
I've got nothing but pretty writing to keep me turning the pages. And that's not enough.
I feel like I'm hearing someone retell a naughty dream made up entirely of strangers:
'And then this guy... started sucking on this girl's breasts during dinner...
An old lad ...more
This book had a lot of promise and the premise was interesting.
The writing is beautiful.
However, about 100 pages into it, with no hope of plot or character development,
I've got nothing but pretty writing to keep me turning the pages. And that's not enough.
I feel like I'm hearing someone retell a naughty dream made up entirely of strangers:
'And then this guy... started sucking on this girl's breasts during dinner...
An old lad ...more
The White Hotel begins with an exquisite Freudian poem. The novel is dark as the history itself and full of alarmingly disturbing thoughts.
“At my first hearing of a dream, I became alarmed, for it told me that the dreamer is quite capable of ending her troubles by taking her life. Train journeys are themselves dreams of death.”
Destiny of an individual is decided long before one's birth and it is interconnected with the destiny of the entire world and our wishes hide in our dreams.
“At my first hearing of a dream, I became alarmed, for it told me that the dreamer is quite capable of ending her troubles by taking her life. Train journeys are themselves dreams of death.”
Destiny of an individual is decided long before one's birth and it is interconnected with the destiny of the entire world and our wishes hide in our dreams.
This is a story not for those with a weak constitution. The first two sections are riddled with explicit, vulgar sexuality. Just when you think you've been spared with an interesting psychoanalysis of a woman with hysteria, you're thrust into the cruel, horrific, and emotionally electrifying events of the Babi Yar massacre.
Thomas is able to create a fiction-fact hybrid that truly makes you take another look at the human propensity for unfathomable cruelty. Its left a permanent mark within me.
Thomas is able to create a fiction-fact hybrid that truly makes you take another look at the human propensity for unfathomable cruelty. Its left a permanent mark within me.
Consists of three distinct sections/styles which, like most of Thomas' work, makes for a rather frustratingly fragmented (albeit fascinating) read.
Much of the book consists of rather tedious exchanges of letters, and the end is horrific, haunting and totally depressing. However, the parts of the book that take place at the White Hotel will completely knock your socks off. It's magical realism at its most mythopoetic & sublime. And of course the writing is dazzling.
Much of the book consists of rather tedious exchanges of letters, and the end is horrific, haunting and totally depressing. However, the parts of the book that take place at the White Hotel will completely knock your socks off. It's magical realism at its most mythopoetic & sublime. And of course the writing is dazzling.
The author of the White Hotel grew up in Falmouth in Cornwall, where there are plenty of buildings serving as hotels which are painted white. And throughout the book, though Cornwall or Falmouth is never mentioned one feels the passionate imaginative intensity of the author as he would have first become aware of the world as a child or an adolescent and before the common physical reality of the world took hold. And yet the shared, common realities are the most dangerous, as the White Hotel shows
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This is by far the best novel I've ever read. After reading it, all the other so-called classics (especially those of contemporary literary fiction) pale in comparison.
I first read it when I was about twelve because my father's old copy was hanging around the house. I didn't fully comprehend the scope of the novel at the time; nonetheless, it had a lasting impact on me. I used to think about it a lot, unable to get some of the images out of my mind. I recently reread it, and as soon as I started ...more
I first read it when I was about twelve because my father's old copy was hanging around the house. I didn't fully comprehend the scope of the novel at the time; nonetheless, it had a lasting impact on me. I used to think about it a lot, unable to get some of the images out of my mind. I recently reread it, and as soon as I started ...more
I read this when it first came out and it made a huge impression on me. I would curious to see if it would still have the same effect almost thirty years later. It did. Dizzyingly powerful.
I feel my analysis from back then still holds true. The book's perspective on the life of Lisa Erdmann constantly expands, and mostly through the use of literary forms.
1- The densest section is the first, written in verse. I take this to be the 'true' depiction of the main character. A poem is the author talki ...more
I feel my analysis from back then still holds true. The book's perspective on the life of Lisa Erdmann constantly expands, and mostly through the use of literary forms.
1- The densest section is the first, written in verse. I take this to be the 'true' depiction of the main character. A poem is the author talki ...more
This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it,
click here.
The symbolism of the title, The White Hotel - the womb, serves as introduction to a novel that is rich in Freudian symbolism, and centres around the analysis of the protagonist by the good doctor. Circling around Freud's twin themes of love and death, eros and thanatos, the novel operates on a number of levels which held together by this common theme.
The author demonstrates quite convincingly that the death instinct and the pleasure principle extends beyond death, as does the human being.
The author demonstrates quite convincingly that the death instinct and the pleasure principle extends beyond death, as does the human being.
"The White Hotel" is an interesting book to say the least. I found the first four chapters to be fascinating, exciting, and captivating. But then the book kept going.
This story about a "hysterical" young woman and her delusions about a fun sex romp at a hotel, told via a poem, then a journal, then Freud's analysis, suddenly turned into a horrific tale of the Holocaust. And then the last chapter: The Camp. What?! So she's alive apparently? Or is this heaven? I really didn't care to make sense of ...more
This story about a "hysterical" young woman and her delusions about a fun sex romp at a hotel, told via a poem, then a journal, then Freud's analysis, suddenly turned into a horrific tale of the Holocaust. And then the last chapter: The Camp. What?! So she's alive apparently? Or is this heaven? I really didn't care to make sense of ...more
| topics | posts | views | last activity | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Holocaust and gen...: What do readers here think of THE WHITE HOTEL? | 1 | 13 | Apr 07, 2016 04:00PM | |
| What are your 3 favourite books of the moment? | 3 | 24 | Dec 17, 2014 08:04PM |
D.M. Thomas was born in Cornwall in 1935. After reading English at New College, Oxford, he became a teacher and was Head of the English Department at Hereford College of Education until he became a full-time writer. His first novel The Flute-Player won the Gollancz Pan/Picador Fantasy Competition. He is also known for his collections of verse and his translation from the Russian poet Anna Akhmatov
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“I didn't know till then the stars, in flakes
of snow come down to fuck the earth, the lake.”
—
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of snow come down to fuck the earth, the lake.”
“She wondered if she had grown obsessed with sex. She admitted to thinking about it almost all the time. ... "And if I'm not thinking about sex, I'm thinking about death," she added bitterly. "Sometimes both at the same time.”
—
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