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Title: I disagree with most reviews - i just didn't like it
Review: I know that i am going against the grain here, but i do NOT think this is a good book. Or even an average book. Hotel World was shortlisted for the Booker Prize and the Orange Prize for Fiction in 2001. I find that very scary. This to me is a pretentious, try-hard attempt at fiction. There are five separate, tenously connected narratives written in various first-person styles. Not a bad premise, but Smith manages to leave it dead in the water. The only really interesting section is from the perspective of a dead character. There are a few interesting snippets, but they are mired in boring dross about characters that i couldn't manage to care about - i kept waiting for a character to grab me - and they didn't. Even the attempt at a resolution didn't bring it together. What a shame.
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