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Overview
At some Parisian lost-and-found, a mysterious manuscript scribbled onto stray bits of hotel stationary and postcards and stuffed into an abandoned briefcase comes into the hands of an "editor," who claims to faithfully transcribe and assemble the random texts. On the face of it, these consist of fastidious descriptions of a series of hotel rooms in cities around the globe, but their world-weary writer, a certain "Olivier Rolin," is also involved in a number of highly improbable international networks, populated by unsavory thugs and Mata Haris in distress.
Author Olivier Rolin has dipped into his extensive travel notebooks to create this highly inventive novel that spoofs, among others, the decaying international espionage scene, the literary author publicity tour, and official French culture, all against a backdrop of the queasy alienation secreted by standard-issue hotel rooms across the globe.
Synopsis
At some Parisian lost-and-found, a mysterious manuscript scribbled onto stray bits of hotel stationary and postcards and stuffed into an abandoned briefcase comes into the hands of an "editor," who claims to faithfully transcribe and assemble the random texts. On the face of it, these consist of fastidious descriptions of a series of hotel rooms in cities around the globe, but their world-weary writer, a certain "Olivier Rolin," is also involved in a number of highly improbable international networks, populated by unsavory thugs and Mata Haris in distress.
Author Olivier Rolin has dipped into his extensive travel notebooks to create this highly inventive novel that spoofs, among others, the decaying international espionage scene, the literary author publicity tour, and official French culture, all against a backdrop of the queasy alienation secreted by standard-issue hotel rooms across the globe.
The Barnes & Noble Review
Hotels are incubators of restlessness and dreams. They prick the occupant's mind with their unfamiliar environments -- which, by extension, loosen the collar of identity. Olivier Rolin's Hotel Crystal makes playful use of this notion by exploring one man's attempt to recall all of the hotel rooms in which he has ever resided. The novel's chapters typically begin with a detailed description of a room, followed by a far-out, frequently droll anecdote about events that transpired therein. The Zelig-like protagonist, who shares the same name as the novel's author, is a writer who moonlights as a spy, arms dealer, smuggler, tutor to fallen monarchs, and consultant to the likes of economic wizards such as Alan Greenspan. Alas, perhaps due to his more dangerous exploits, or weariness with life, "Olivier Rolin" is unable to bring his project to a conclusion. After he goes missing, an acquaintance chances upon his recollections, which have been jotted down on disparate pieces of stationery. She turns these over to a group of editors, who collate the work and embellish it with amusingly pointy-headed footnotes. This smart, madcap book is ideal for the inveterate traveler as well as for anyone who enjoys academic farces (especially when punctuated with things such as a hijacking of the Mars landing probe, the manipulation of a Vatican insider, and an attempt to purchase a literary prize -- aborted because the funds required for that purchase are stolen by "Rolin" to pay off terrorist kidnappers). --Christopher Byrd
Editorials
Entertainment Weekly
In this witty puzzler of a novel by Olivier Rolin (translated by Jane Kuntz), a traveler with the same name as the author begins each chapter with a description of a different hotel room he's stayed in around the world. These, in turn, become occasions for Rolin (or 'Rolin'?) to tell us of his adventures as a globe-trotting amateur spy and dashing lover.Frenchman Rolin engages in literary game-playing in Hotel Crystal, crossing influences such as Vladimir Nabokov and Georges Perec.
L'Humanite
Olivier Rolin once again made the bet of a radical invention. And he filled his contract. Superbly.World Literature Today
Rolin's mastery of language, along with his rich perceptions of locale and the human psyche, rewards a reader willing to attend.Publishers Weekly
Using a Georges Perec line about memory as his point of departure, Rolin, a French journalist and accomplished novelist (Port-Soudan, Tigre en papier), has fashioned in forensic detail a travelogue of hotel rooms around the globe. From Room 308 in the "Polar Hotel" of Khatanga, Russia, to Room 8 in the Au Bon Accueil in Saint-Nazaire, France, another "Olivier Rolin" scribbled these brief, diarylike accounts on scraps of paper to be discovered before he supposedly disappeared for good. Along with the exact measurements of the room, descriptions of furnishings-especially the mirrors, in which he notes his reflection-the missing narrator offers clues about himself; he does some underhanded dealing with a smalltime Russian crook, Gricha; he drops literary allusions, from Homer to Malcolm Lowry; and he likes women, frequently using his rooms as trysting spots. It seems as though he could be embroiled in an international Machiavellian plot. In the end, he pines for one unattainable woman, Mélanie Melbourne, who scolds him because he can't remember the room that signifies their "impossible life together," Room 211 of the Hotel Crystal, in Nancy, France. Rolin's arch antinovel works as a kind of jokester hall of mirrors or a playful, literary roman policier. (May)
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