nomadreader

The backstory: The Pink Hotel , Anna Stothard's second novel, is longlisted for the 2012 Orange Prize . At 29 Stothard is the youngest writer on this year's longlist. The basics: The Pink Hotel is the story of a seventeen-year-old girl from London who sets off to Los Angeles when her mother, who left when she was three, dies. Her mother and her husband own the pink hotel in Venice Beach. My thoughts: When I sat down to read The Pink Hotel , I knew little about it. The cover led me to believe it was a light, vacation romp and perhaps a romance of sorts. Instead, I was delighted to discover an absorbing, gritty portrait of the unnamed narrator and her search for herself in her mother's memory. I was mesmerized by Stothard's portrait of Los Angeles and its inhabitants. The spunky heroine arrives during her mother's wake, which is really more of a rave. She sneaks up to the apartment at the top of the hotel where her mother lived. She takes off with a suitcase fille...