Available Formats
Hardback, Large Print Edition
Published: 1st December 2024
CD-Audio, Audiobook
Published: 15th October 2024
Women's Hotel: [Audiobook]
By (Author) Daniel M Lavery
Read By Mara Wilson
HarperCollins
HarperCollins
15th October 2024
Audiobook
United States
General
Fiction
Historical fiction
CD-Audio
From the New York Times bestselling author and advice columnist, a poignant and funny debut novel about the residents of a women's hotel in 1960s New York City.
The Beidermeier might be several rungs lower on the ladder than the real-life Barbizon, but its residents manage to occupy one another nonetheless. There's Katherine, the first-floor manager, lightly cynical and more than lightly suggestible. There's Lucianne, a workshy party girl caught between the love of comfort and an instinctive bridling at convention, Kitty the sponger, Ruth the failed hairdresser, and Pauline the typesetter. And there's Stephen, the daytime elevator operator and part-time Cooper Union student.
The residents give up breakfast, juggle competing jobs at rival presses, abandon their children, get laid off from the telephone company, attempt to retrain as stenographers, all with the shared awareness that their days as an institution are numbered, and they'd better make the most of it while it lasts.
As trenchant as the novels of Dawn Powell and Rona Jaffe and as immersive as The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel and Lessons in Chemistry, Women's Hotel is a modern classic--and it is very, very funny.
Daniel M. Lavery is a former "Dear Prudence" advice columnist at Slate, the cofounder of The Toast, and the New York Times-bestselling author of Texts from Jane Eyre, The Merry Spinster, and Something That May Shock and Discredit You. He also writes the popular newsletter The Chatner. He lives in Brooklyn, New York. Mara Wilson is a writer, playwright, actor, and storyteller perhaps best known as the little girl from Mrs. Doubtfire, Miracle on 34th Street, and Matilda. A graduate of NYU's Tisch School of the Arts, she regularly appears at live storytelling and comedy shows, including her own, What Are You Afraid Of. Her writing can be found on Jezebel, The Toast, McSweeney's, the Daily Beast, and Cracked.com, and on her blog, MaraWilsonWritesStuff.com. A voice actor on the podcast Welcome to Night Vale, she will guest star on upcoming episodes of Broad City and BoJack Horseman. She lives in New York City.