The Grand Hotel
By (Author) Gregory Day
Random House Australia
Vintage (Australia)
1st July 2010
Australia
General
Fiction
823.4
Paperback
480
Width 155mm, Height 232mm, Spine 34mm
618g
Robbed of his zest for life by the absurd innovations of his local council, including knocking down the only pub in his beloved home town and roofing over a section of the creek to protect swimmers from the rain, artist Noel Lea exiles himself in the hills above Mangowak, on the southwest Victorian coast. He returns to find an unexpected destiny awaits. At a turning point in the town's history it seems he has a crucial role to play, as the unlikely publican of an even unlikelier hotel. This is a novel about an Australian pub twenty-first-century style, where the toilets play automated Dadaist recordings, Happy Hour comes with a blessing from the Pope and the patrons' libidos are as voracious as their thirst for the local ale. As events in the hotel take a twist that not even its inventive publican could have imagined, a long-held local mystery begins finally to unravel. Noel and his friends find themselves in uncharted territory, and to make matters worse, the local authorities are hell-bent on closing them down.
Gregory Day is the author of The Patron Saint of Eels and Ron McCoy's Sea of Diamonds.