The Pink Hotel

Anna Stothard
288pp
ISBN: 978-1-84688-131-2
almabooks Ltd. London 18th March 2011

Anna Stothard's second novel is palpably visual: each line cluttered with voluptuous images like brightly coloured cakes jostling off an assembly line. It takes a lot from cinema in the way we are 'dropped right in it' from the start, and then the girl's persona and back history are gradually revealed as she stumbles onwards into the unknown.

She has flown from the sepia-toned West Hampstead to sun-blasted Los Angeles for the funeral of her mother, last seen when she was in her childhood. She stays in the sun, living on the edge of society while she tries to find out who and what her mother was. Living on the run is natural for her: she sees pain as the status quo, while hoping for love. The story is populated by exotic characters (the serious drinkers, the Armenian ladies, the fake gangsters) who might hardly have been able to exist in the relative monochrome of London; although I am sure that Anna Stothard could paint Brits just as crumblingly bright.
The girl's inner dialogue is facinating, too - including the intensely observed momentary lapses of perception linking actions which we all get to a greater or lesser extent, and which many readers will think about for the first time.

Having read this book in three sittings, I will probably dip into it again from time to time - there are so many 'favourite' bits - quite like the movie I hope to see it become.

Anna Stothard (who is the daughter of Peter Stothard, TLS editor, and of novelist Sally Emerson) came to write this novel because one day she found a bunch of love letters from 'Hitch-hiker' author Douglas Adams to her mother, with whom Adams had a long affair before his premature death in 2001.