THE LONELY HEARTS HOTEL

The Lonely Hearts Hotel, Heather O'Neill, Riverhead Books, 2017, 389 pp

 

Summary from Goodreads: Two babies are abandoned in a Montreal orphanage in the winter of 1914. Before long, their talents emerge: Pierrot is a piano prodigy; Rose lights up even the dreariest room with her dancing and comedy. As they travel around the city performing clown routines, the children fall in love with each other and dream up a plan for the most extraordinary and seductive circus show the world has ever seen.

Separated as teenagers, sent off to work as servants during the Great Depression, both descend into the city's underworld, dabbling in sex, drugs and theft in order to survive. But when Rose and Pierrot finally reunite beneath the snowflakes after years of searching and desperate poverty the possibilities of their childhood dreams are renewed, and they'll go to extreme lengths to make them come true. Soon, Rose, Pierrot and their troupe of clowns and chorus girls have hit New York, commanding the stage as well as the alleys, and neither the theater nor the underworld will ever look the same.

 

My Review:

My favorite book read in September will also be on my Top 25 Books Read in 2019. 

 

There are many reasons to read books: to learn about life and the world, to understand history, to find empathy for all types of people and creatures, to be entertained, to feel any and all possible emotions. I read for all those reasons.

 

My #1 reason for continuing to open the covers of as many books as I can is to find the ones that take me away to places of wonder. The Lonely Hearts Hotel did that for me, more completely than perhaps the great majority of books I have read.

 

Orphans, a love story, music, magic, clowns, deepest sorrows, highest achievements, all set in two iconic cities: Montreal and New York. These are ingredients that never fail to lure me in and when they are combined with style and sympathy and a clear-eyed look at life, as Heather O'Neill has done, I never want the book to end.

 

This is a novel for grownups who will not ever forget the spells cast on them by certain books in their childhoods, maybe more geared for females but I wouldn't want to make that judgement on either the book or the readers. I guess what is more true is it's a book for a select group of readers who would recognize each other anywhere.