Sending to editotrgrrl of New Haven, CT, USA. Wish List Trade.

Trade paperback received in the mail from pjlareau in Little Canada, Minnesota, USA, in trade for Autobiography of a Fat Bride. I liked the sequel, Ladies' Night at Finbar's Hotel, and look forward to reading this.

From Publishers Weekly
The soon-to-be-demolished Dublin semi-landmark, the shabby Finbar's Hotel, is booked solid with seven of Ireland's most talented writers, each of whom tells a chapter of this ingeniously imagined novel. Readers familiar with the literary styles of Roddy Doyle, Colm Tóibín, Jennifer Johnson, Hugo Hamilton, Joseph O'Connor, Anne Enright or Dermot Bolger will need to draw on their expertise to discern who wrote which episode, since no direct attribution is provided. Bolger (editor of The Vintage Book of Contemporary Irish Fiction) has masterminded this robust puzzle, and the hotel's very Irish atmosphere blooms with seven stories of nostalgia, humor and melancholy. There's a shaggy dog tale about a kidnapped cat in Room 103 and a hard-drinking Dublin man celebrating a mid-life crisis in 101 just across the hall from the already tense reunion of two sisters in 102. In 104 the night manager's reliving the hotel's shady history while confronting a guest who's checked in under an assumed name; and in 107 a paranoid art thief is worrying about how the woman next door might blow his hand off of a hot Rembrandt, while she in turn reminisces about her first love. One of the chief pleasures of this quirky book is encountering these characters from different perspectives as they intrude briefly into each other's stories. At its strongest points, the writers summon a deep sense of place, both historical and emotional. Not a conventional novel, clearly, yet the interlinked stories tenders more cumulative harmony than a conventional anthology; the heartening, garrulous Finbar's Hotel is a captivating place to check into.

From Library Journal
Hotels provide a cinematic setting where lost souls can comfort one another -- or cower, if need be. Finbar's Hotel, a fictitious Dublin firetrap, is no different, and seven contemporary Irish writers Roddy Doyle (The Woman Who Walked into Doors, 1996) being the most recognizable to American readers -- have each written a "room" anonymously. The collaboration blends humor, tragedy, and love. Readers will feel like flies on Finbar's peeling walls, seeing and hearing a little too much of the guests' lives. As editor, Bolger builds a smooth series of crises without cramping the writers' styles (and those "rooms" aren't very big). With luck, the film rights have already been sold and the director will make a better movie than Four Rooms with Finbar's three-dimensional cast of characters. Recommended for popular fiction collections.

From Kirkus Reviews
Seven Irish novelists -- Joseph O'Connor, Anne Enright, Colm Tóibín, Roddy Doyle, Jennifer Johnston, Hugo Hamilton, and Bolger himself -- collaborate, with generally good and at times outstanding results, to tell a tale of a single night in a once-famous, soon-to-be-demolished Dublin hotel. Each of the writers here brings to life a guest who occupies a room on the first floor. Room 101 provides novel entertainment for aging Ben, who's never before been in a hotel. His walk on the wild side takes him in and out of his room, the bar, the residents' lounge, and the nightclub, until finally his intervention in a curbside domestic dispute rewards him with a bloody nose. For sisters Rose and Ivy in 102, it's a rare meeting, requested by matronly Ivy in order to persuade her London-based sibling to come home to see their mother -- something Rose has refused to do since leaving home at age 17. Ken walks into 103 with a ghetto-blaster and a plot to get his revenge on the woman who jilted him. The stories from 104 and 105 are easily the most striking: the former involves the hotel manager and the history of Finbar's, which achieved its success partly through the famous discretion of the founder, the grandfather of the man in 104; the woman in 105 is dying of cancer, but by chance meets an Irish-Jewish tour guide from New York, who gives her the courage to tell her husband and children her sad secret. Peopling other tales are a woman over from America to settle her father's estate (and her memory of a teenage romance), and a burglar trying to sell a Rembrandt and other paintings that represent the heist of his life. More than a curiosity, but less than a masterwork: a collection that holds together surprisingly well given that each story is ultimately self-contained.

Just like the sequel, Ladies' Night at Finbar's Hotel (which I read first), I have no idea who wrote any of these stories. Roddy Doyle is the only author I've ever read before -- I've never even heard of the others.

The characters in these stories have pretty strong opinions about each other!

RELEASE NOTES:
This is one of many Bookcrossing books on a table in the second floor hallway at 149 York Street. It's a Yale building with restricted access, which is why I only make release notes for a few books (to keep the UBCZ on the Go Hunting page without flooding inboxes with alerts for unhuntable releases). If you have a Yale ID (or know someone who does), you may be able to get in. Use the door to the right; the door on the left goes to the basement.

Thanks for finding this book
Please write a journal entry letting all its past and future readers know that this book was found. (It's anonymous, and you don't have to join Bookcrossing to do it.) Then read and keep this book, give it to a friend, or even release it for someone else to find--just like you did. Happy reading!