Many thanks to NetGalley, Macmillan Audio, and Farrar, Strauss & Giroux for gifting me an audio ARC of this wonderful book by Ben Lerne, perfectly narrated by Seth Numrich. All opinions expressed in this review are my own - 4.5 stars!
This story plays out in three sections, each named after a different hotel, and narrated by an unnamed male. In the first story, Hotel Providence, the narrator travels to Rhode Island to conduct an interview with Thomas, his 90-year-old mentor and the father of his college friend, Max. However, the narrator drops his smartphone in the hotel sink the evening before and arrives at Thomas' house with no recording device. In Hotel Villa Real, the narrator is part of a symposium after Thomas' death, where he has revealed that he didn't have a recording device and had to construct parts of his interview by memory. In Hotel Arbez, we get a discussion between the narrator and Max.
This is a short book but contains so very much. I loved the narrator's voice - calm, easy to get lost in, but it perfectly captured the almost dreamlike quality of the writing. It's about technology and memory, how different generations view both, and how it can both connect and divide us. At one point, Thomas talks about how his son complains that he didn't spend enough time with him, yet now his own daughter is glued to her screen. So very true how that blue light is perceived differently. It's also a story of fathers and sons, of parenthood. The story of Max's daughter's eating issues was especially poignant as was the Covid storyline. You're not sure until the end how everything interconnects and it's perfect. I loved it.
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