Hôtel Splendid Trilogy

Hôtel Splendid sits on the edge of a desolate swamp in an unnamed country. A woman runs the hotel, which is patronized only by the most desperate travelers or workers, batting ancient plumbing, pest infestations, and a crumbling ceiling. On top of all her unending tasks, she waits on her two sisters—one bored, one infirm—as the hotel sinks slowly into the swamp. In Forever Valley, an orphan comes of age and goes from being housed in a rectory, where she reads to the aging minister, to the dance hall across the street where she immediately begins sex work. By day, she begins a personal project to exhume the grounds of the rectory in search of her loved ones. In Rose Mellie Rose, a baby is found by Rose, who raises her in a souvenir shop. At the age of twelve and already a young woman, Mellie moves to the spectral town of Oât, where she makes a photographic and written record of her life and of a dying language. In all three novels, Redonnet has said, "it is the women who fight, who seek, who create."

A fever dream of looping, repeating obsessions, a world where time alternately contracts and leaps, and decay and disintegration are inevitable and unstoppable, and a strange, disquieting gem of laconic humour and crushed dreams, Marie Redonnet’s Hôtel Splendid Trilogy is a modern classic: as brutal and unforgettable as a Brothers Grimm tale.