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    A Small Hotel
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    A Small Hotel
    Unavailable
    A Small Hotel
    Audiobook6 hours

    A Small Hotel

    Published by Dreamscape Media Audio

    3.5/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this audiobook

    Set in contemporary New Orleans but working its way back in time, A Small Hotel chronicles the relationship between Michael and Kelly Hays, who have decided to separate after twenty years of marriage. The book begins on the day that the Hays are to finalize their divorce. Kelly is due to be in court, but instead she drives to New Orleans and checks into the hotel where she and Michael fell in love some twenty years earlier and where she must now make a decision that will forever affect her, Michael, and their nineteen-year-old daughter. Butler masterfully weaves scenes of the present with memories from both Michael and Kelly, showing two people deeply in love but struggling with their own inabilities to express this love.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherDreamscape Media Audio
    Release dateNov 15, 2011
    ISBN9781611204711
    Unavailable
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    Reviews for A Small Hotel

    3.5/5

    53 ratings4 reviews

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    • 4/5
      Starting with the day their divorce is to be finalized in court, the story of Kelly and Michael, alternate between the present and the past. Set in New Orleans, we're taken to the small hotel in which Kelly and Michael's relationship began more than 20 years ago and then back to the present where there's a bottle of Scotch and a bottle of pills in Room 303.The author's method of switching time periods delivers memories of both Kelly and Michael very successfully and we gradually understand not just their personalities but also the emotions that drove them to the actions leading to the fateful day when their divorce was to be finalized. It's so beautifully written and you feel the pain for both characters and will find yourself rooting for them both equally.
    • 5/5
      I devoured this book in one evening. The only reason it doesn't get five stars is the ending, which I found too good to be true. Butler dissects a 25 year marriage on the day of divorce. It shifts from the present to looking back to when Kelly and Michael met. It's romantic, sad, lush and surprising. In addition, it's that marvelous combination of good writing and good story. Read it and be prepared to be swept away.
    • 4/5
      This is the story of Michael and Kelly Hays. It tells us of how they met, married, lived and fell apart. Michael is a lawyer and an emotionally distant man. He has been raised to believe that simply by "being there" he has expressed his emotions. This is learned behavior from his emotionally distant father. His father also teaches him that saying "I love you" is nothing more than words.Kelly is a woman who deeply feels and needs to hear the words from her husband but never pushes him to say those three little words. Over the course of their 25 year marriage she begins to despair as she realizes that she needs those words to affirm who she is. This is perhaps due to her father's emotional distance and mental problems experienced during her own childhood.We are allowed to see the experiences that have impacted on both Michael and Kelly through numerous flashbacks. One minute Kelly is sitting in a hotel room alone and the next she is at the beginning of her relationship with Michael, and then it is 10 years later or perhaps only a few months in the past. Kelly has left Pensacola FL on her way to a small hotel in New Orleans LA to remember and end it all. This hotel is where Kelly and Michael initially consummated their relationship and returned numerous times over the course of their marriage. Both she and Michael consider room 303 to be their room, and it is here she will end her life without Michael much as it began with him 20+ years earlier.Meanwhile Michael is suffering from his own personal demons as he reflects on his childhood and marriage. He is only a few miles away in Mississippi, attending a costume ball with his new love interest Laurie. Laurie is 29 years old, only a few years older than Michael's daughter, and she has romanticized Michael's need for quiet. Regrettably she doesn't truly understand him or his inability to say much outside of the courtroom.The irony is that both Michael and Kelly are more alike than they may know. Even though Kelly confesses to an affair, she never says that she wants her marriage to end. And Michael pushes through the divorce without ever saying that he wants the marriage to continue. To his mind, if Kelly wants to stay she should say so without coercion. Kelly feels that Michael should be able to say those three little words without coercion. Mr. Butler has deftly woven a tale of longing that ultimately reveals that men and women are more alike then perhaps they realize. It is sometimes sad without being depressingly so and always realistic. Look for A Small Hotel to be released in July of this year. I'm definitely adding this to my to-be-purchased and read-again lists.I thank both the publisher Grove Press and netGalley for the opportunity to read and review this book.
    • 5/5
      Really immersively written book about annoying characters but done well