The story follows the
character Edith Hope who is taking an impromptu vacation at the Hotel du Lac
after some unnamed event in which she has somehow embarrassed herself and her
friends. The hotel is in Switzerland in an unnamed place on an unnamed lake and
this very lack of naming serves to highlight the exile to which Edith has been
subjected. The hotel itself does not advertise, but relies on word of mouth to
fill its rooms. It is the end of the season. The hotel is beginning to run
down, the town is quiet, its residents are either locals or exiles like Edith.
Not surprisingly, the hotel residents are mainly cast off women.
Edith, back in London, is a
successful writer of romantic fiction (under a pseudonym, of course. One
cannot, as a single woman of this era, be both free and successful) and approaches her exile in a defiant spirit,
intending to work it out whilst working through her next novel. Instead she
finds herself drawn into observations of, and the lives of, her fellow
cast-offs serving their own exiles in the hotel. This includes Mme du Bonneuil,
an elderly widow moved from hotel to hotel, cast off by her son. Monica, a
beautiful aristocratic woman with a troublesome dog, cast off by her husband
for failing to produce a child. Iris and Jennifer Pusey, less cast off than
cast adrift, rich soulless women enraptured by their own self-absorption. And
then there is Mr. Neville, an irreverent and somehow enticing man who offers
Edith a way out of her imposed exile and isolation. Through the hotel residents
Edith finds herself drawn into their small dramas, and through their dramas we
come to understand Edith’s own.
This is a book of
contradictions. Edith is presented as a woman who is quiet and timorous,
lacking in boldness or direction. And yet she retains a core of defiance, an
unwillingness to change in order to achieve that mythical, fairy tale ‘happiness’
that all women are supposed to desire (marriage). You get the impression that
Edith is neither sad nor regretful of her actions, and that where she is
happiest is living in her own space according to her own routine; the only
thing which causes her regret or sadness is the way others expect her to do and
be something different.
Don’t expect a lot to happen
in Hotel du Lac, it is a book full of melancholy and grey reflections. Much of
the action is ‘told’ by means of letters from Edith to David (a man with whom
Edith has been having a secret affair), or through conversations on long, sad
walks or over coffee and cake at the quiet local cafe. And yet in these quiet
reflections there is a powerful message, a surprisingly unexpectedly feminist
novel, expressed in the manner of passive resistance rather than direct action.
In Edith we find an unapologetically individual woman, uncompromising in her
own way, unwilling to sacrifice herself for the sake of expectation. It is a
story I am sure many women will relate to. Perhaps it will make some readers
mad, perhaps the slow pace and quiet resistance will be a bit frustrating. But
in its quiet, withdrawn way this is a magnificent book. Lightly told,
deceptively simple, and beautifully written. A joy to read, and a future
classic in the making.
Hotel du Lac receives a
stately 9/10 Biis.
