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A Private Hotel for Gentle Ladies: A novel
by Ellen Cooney
Product Group: Book
Publisher: Pantheon (2005-11-22)
ISBN: 0375423400
EAN: 9780375423406
Dewy Decimal #: 813
Hardcover: 320 pages
Release Date: 2005-11-22
SKU: MWB209802
Condition: Fine
Comments: 0375423400 This book evidences little to no use; it is free of markings and the pages are clean. Its jacket and cover show minimal shelf wear. Your book will be carefully protected for transit in sturdy, weather-resistant packaging. We are prompt, efficient, communicative.
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Editorial Reviews
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Product Description
It is 1900 in a small, prosperous Massachusetts town. Charlotte Heath, a lively, independent redhead of humble beginnings, is married to the scion of the powerful Heath family. When, on her first outing after a long illness, she spies her husband, Hays, bending to kiss another woman in the village square, impulsive Charlotte heads her horses straight out of town. Unsure where to go but certain that she wants to leave both Hays and the stifling, if luxurious, life of the Heath household behind, Charlotte makes her way to Boston and checks in at “The Beechmont: A Private Hotel for Gentle Ladies,” where she makes another startling discovery: the classy Beechmont is a rather unique institution, where handsome porters make discreet, late-night visits to its all-female clientele. Charlotte finds herself surrounded by a cast of characters that will delight the reader as she settles into life at this reverse brothel: Harry Alcorn, the hotel’s dashing and prescient proprietor; Miss Berenice Singleton, the bohemian painter who holds a kind of salon in her rooms; the scowling cook, Mrs. Petty, who once worked for the Heaths and is determined that Charlotte not stay on at the Beechmont; the charming and handsome “porter” Arthur, who both gives pleasure and makes trouble; and the venerable lady doctor Lily Heath, her husband’s aunt, whom Charlotte is amazed to find among the hotel’s regulars.
In the midst of a dizzying sexual enlightenment, Charlotte must puzzle out why she really left Hays and why he seems to have left her first. Her task is to determine whether she can forgive him and to discover where, if anywhere, she truly belongs–an adventure that takes her farther afield than she could ever have imagined.
Ellen Cooney has given us a remarkable portrait of a historical moment and an irresistible protagonist. Fresh, high-spirited, and wonderfully seductive in the telling, A Private Hotel for Gentle Ladies carries the reader along on a woman’s unforgettable journey to self-enlightenment.
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Customer Reviews
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Took Too Long To Get Good
Rating  (2)
Date: 2008-06-19
1 out of 1 customers found this reveiw helpful
Charlotte leaves her sick bed for the first time in a year only to see her husband kissing another woman. Since this is only 1900 and there aren't many choices for a woman, she decides to take a break from her comfortable but stifling marriage and sets up housekeeping in Boston at The Beechmont, which turns out to be a male brothel in which handsome porters make discreet visits to the establishment's female clientele. There is a curious cast of characters, but they are too shallowly drawn to get a good liking for any of them. This book just rambles too much for my taste. It doesn't get interesting until well past page 100.
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Well-written, Vivid Portrayal of Society in Early 1900s America
Rating  (4)
Date: 2007-08-10
A Private Hotel for Gentle Ladies focuses on Charlotte Heath, a woman around 30 married to the youngest son of a rich, prominent American family. After spending nearly a year in bed due to a mysterious, paralyzing illness, Charlotte ventures out and witnesses her husband, Hays, about to kiss another woman. Without much thought, Charlotte turns around and flees the town, arriving at the place of employment of her only friend, the Heaths' past cook. This is the hotel of the title - a hotel catering to women (who mainly seem middle-aged, somewhat bohemian and well-off) who are visited in the evenings by handsome, young "porters," who provide them with all manners of sexual and intellectual fulfillment. Thrown into the midst of this titillating atmosphere, Charlotte is at first ignorant of the true nature of the hotel, but as realization dawns, she embraces its purpose whole-heartedly, and also ends up embracing one of the porters, Arthur Pym.
If you expect a titillating, erotic read, this is not it. Despite the novel's premise, the focus is on Charlotte's inner struggle: she is fed up with her stifling former life but also hurt and upset by Hays's betrayal; she feels she abandoned her past (including her family) for a life where she always felt out of place; she is drawn in by the excitement of love and sex with someone new and more liberated (Arthur) but feels more strongly that she longs to have those feelings with her husband (Hays), despite his betrayal; she spent so long in bed, weak, helpless, that she is now determined to be strong, free, and willful.
Cooney's narrative is vivid and passionate. The detail is striking and tactile, and it is easy to immerse oneself in this muted, proper world. She also does a fantastic job of portraying the emotional life of a woman in Charlotte's situation. It is unrealistic to think that Charlotte would just turn around and leave her husband without looking back, embarking on a new, exciting, liberated life. Instead, Cooney concentrates on the maelstrom of emotions Charlotte feels, and the reader feels as conflicted as she does, but also as stimulated by the new sensory experiences as she is.
The end is not entirely satisfying, as the reader does not find resolution to many of the novel's mysterious situations (what will happen to Lucy Alcorn? why is Lucy's keeper so sad? what is the relationship like between Lily and her husband? what happens to the cook and her children?), including Charlotte's own situation, but I didn't find myself that displeased. One has a good idea what might happen and perhaps that is enough. Also, some of the relationships were a bit odd (for example, why would Charlotte feel such an affinity with the painter upstairs after spending only a few minutes with her?). Overall, there was less action in this book than I expected, and the action that the book has is interrupted by pages of Charlotte's inner turmoil and memories. But, Cooney's portrayal of Charlotte's thoughts is so vivid, rich, and real, that this becomes the best accomplishment of the book.
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Where did it go wrong?
Rating  (1)
Date: 2007-06-18
2 out of 2 customers found this reveiw helpful
After a somewhat lyrical & intriguing start this story simply tanked. What happened? Who knows because it degenerated into a silly muddle that was a total waste of my time. Will I ever get those hours back? I don't think so. The one star is for the premise, the missing four stars are for all the lost promise. A Private Hotel would have made a great short story, it was about 150 pages too long.
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Excellent prose, but in the end, not a great read
Rating (1)
Date: 2007-05-01
3 out of 3 customers found this reveiw helpful
I decided to read this because of the recommendation by author Julia Glass (she wrote Three Junes).
I agree with others that the writing is superb, particularly in the first few chapters. The author paints a fascinating picture of what life is like in the early 20th centurty. I found that to be the most engaging part of the story.
As the book drags on, there are many unanswered questions. For instance -- who was the woman that Hays was stooping to kiss at the beginning of the book? Characters come and go and contribute little to the story, the "gratifying surprise" at the end as intimated by Julia Glass, is hardly gratifying and not much of a surprise. Should we really care that much about the situation between Arthur and Eunice? We barely know anything of Eunice until the "surprise".
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A Good Start, But Not Much Else.
Rating (2)
Date: 2006-06-13
7 out of 8 customers found this reveiw helpful
I had such high hopes for this book, based on its description. And in spite of the author's sometimes hard-to-follow writing style - she does love to start in one place and wander quite far from the original subject before finally winding her way back - for the first few chapters I managed to hold on to those hopes.
But in the end, I would have to classify this book as 80 percent disappointment.
Charlotte is set up to be a very sympathetic character: Married to a man she loves, but trapped in the family home surrounded by a seemingly endless supply of in-laws (also all residents of the family home), none of whom have ever made much of an effort to make her feel a part of the family. Charlotte has been unable to bear a child to term in all the years of the marriage, and her 10 months in a sickbed seem to have put the final distance between her and her husband, Hays.
Finally, after an inexplicable recovery (the author never bothers to give any hint of why Charlotte is suddenly well after all this time), Charlotte is off to surprise her husband at the wake for one of his recently deceased uncles. But what she encounters is Hays and a mystery woman, just about to share a kiss.
Calling in a favor from the local baker and his wife, Charlotte finds herself at the hotel of the title, facing a chilly reception from Mrs. Petty - the former cook in Charlotte's in-law's house - who had been the one to first tell Charlotte about the hotel. (Though not about the details of what goes on there.)
To this point, the book was enjoyable. But once Charlotte lands in the hotel, the book heads into a decline from which it never recovers.
The efforts of the hotel's owner, his staff and Charlotte's Aunt Lily - a surprise "regular" at the hotel - to get Charlotte out of the hotel were understandable, if a little tedious. Arthur's attachment to Charlotte is pretty sudden, and regardless of how she feels about Hays' cheating on her, it seems a little odd that she would embark on an affair with Arthur quite so easily.
And unless the author is planning a sequel, there were things in this book that just didn't seem to have a reason for being. Charlotte's introduction to the hotel owner's wife and her servant, for example. An interesting enough scene, but to what purpose?
The artist who created all the paintings in the hotel - introduced, then killed off.
Mrs. Petty and her children - suddenly packed off to another situation, for the good of the children. Sure, we learn who the father of one of the children is, but again - why?
Charlotte's parents, who have been conspicuously absent from Charlotte's thoughts for a good portion of the book - there's no purpose to their appearance at the end, nor really to Charlotte's search for them.
The ending, as mentioned by another reviewer, is the worst part of the book. Why does Charlotte do what she does when she leaves the hotel? Is it guilt, a desire for reconciliation?
Charlotte frustrates me...I don't know what she wants, and most of the time she doesn't seem to know, either. In the end, I didn't care much about this book, except to wonder about the several chapters that seemed to have been lopped off the end. Maybe they would have wrapped things up in a better fashion.
I won't read this book again, and I certainly can't recommend it to others.
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