And I wonder: why is it that a growing thing that springs up of its own accord and in surprising places must be "just a weed"?The creepy truth is some poor cooked to death egg on its moon walks. Impatient photographers hung around the edges and they were sorry inside the lines. I never saw it anyway. It was just for a moment, when I was much younger than I am now. You know how little kids say they are some age and a half to make sure you won't deny a second of their lives? It was before your time minus that half. Don't make me older than I already am. It might have been a bird, no it was a bee. That's the trick of sneaking over the age line is to never admit you weren't already there. I didn't stay up past my bedtime and I wasn't there when that little girl drowned. It looks like a tragedy, an inevitability, these people, what can you do? and those folks. We've been here from the beginning.So this Emma Graham picks up on all of their buried shit. Like a dog's treasure half presented at your feet and the remaining nastiest tidbit stashed away for graduation. Her truthings don't mean much except to Emma. Weeell, her version when she gets dressed for yet another day. Four books in this series and it is hard that she's twelve on a groundhog day. Her "I'm only twelve" reminders recalled a little girl brought deaf to the world when she's proud of herself in a new skirt. Uh huh, this is what my legs look like turning the universe. I liked that she is already afraid of what there is to lose. The backwash of precocious ego made me a bit sick at times. I was stuck with her when she was annoying. So the dead little girl died when she was Emma's age. Time and to-do lists and a cold one and I can see them sitting on their stools in the diner waiting as if nothing had happened at all between then and another person to add her weight of p's and q's. Everyone knows everyone smells coming from the kitchen. Their family tree remembers the harder to reach branches on your own if the gathering dust could think. I can feel it on the other side when someone who wasn't there makes it all about her. That's what it must have been like. Whatever happens is all about whomever if it is today or tomorrow. Who is left to paint Mary Evelyn as she looked to herself? I loved that about Hotel Paradise. I could see adopting a former tragedy as your own, maybe a true fascination with how a lost girl looked. You don't know what happens to her and it could be whatever you needed it to be when your own head felt like a empty house at night. I loved that Emma doesn't have a say in another's door steps. She presses her ghostly face and must have made it yesterday for long enough just by asking to hear that story once more. The Sheriff has his job to do and the girl detective is ever so put out when she doesn't run his show. Sometimes she gets it and there's some tedious voice over. The best thing about the Emma Graham series is it doesn't matter what happened to Mary Evelyn (and other tragedies) in a concentrated way you could sew up into a lifelike taxidermy project. Whatever animal you identify with as spirit animal. It feels true when it suits you and it feels uncomfortable when it doesn't. Or the other way around. I really liked that Emma is as pointless in her "truths" as everyone else. She doesn't know why it is so important to her to find out what happened. Best of all she doesn't want to know. If she finds out then maybe it'll leave her. Maybe she would have to settle another layer of dust with everyone else. Maybe no one would even ask her. Put on the hat of painter and tell everyone what theirs looks like, maybe. Maybe that's what she will keep on keeping on. Mary Evelyn is still dead. She goes treasure hunting for what ifs and back thens. I could catch the two girls side by side, like what if they were friends. Well, not really. I can feel that search light without any effort most times. It feels really good to get a voice in your head of someone who, if they existed, could be with you and talk to you in that quiet head voice. Emma is sometimes the kind of girl who thinks it would be a relief to be an animal and free of wanting things. I liked this one a lot:Yet the two of them together (and they were never apart) seemed almost pleased with things. I've always thought it dumb, really dumb, to comment on other people's happiness- that is, whether they were or were not happy- but the Woods had an air about them as if they were more or less happy.If she knew me we could talk about people I've known or observed being observed and commented on by others as a "at least they seem happy" type. Someone you wouldn't want to be yourself because your gut won't lie over the daily humiliations of everything that must be hard for them. Or you could be envious of them if life gets out of the way or them. But no way does it all of the time. I don't know how Emma could have said the two men who are stuck in the same sentence from forty years ago on the very same bench are happy. It was frustrating to take her as the final word. I don't want to accept happiness or its flip-side as the only outcome. What is it to her if they are not except for that wondering feeling you can get about other people that can feel good or horrible. For a kid who is making herself sick in holding onto what is left of childhood I'd think she'd be less keen on telling like it is for anyone else. Whatever you can manage to think is good or bad about anything on any given day. I don't think it was in Hotel Paradise (probably the sequel Cold Flat Junction) that people only wanted to check to make sure you were feeling how they wanted you to feel than them truly caring if you were happy or not. I got some consolation out of that Emma bit that day. She would probably have been thinking about for ages the stuff I did back then. Her girl hypnotizing herself with a pick up sticks game and mine who tried to rot her own teeth because she thought a mouth of gold teeth would be the best ever. The "weeds" line fits this whole series for me, really. Just walking around being Emma could be so good when sometimes she's in the hot seat. Family and town who could put you in a photo album as if your life were already over for them. Maybe life is sitting through a ton of bull shit to get a bit of something that has nothing to do with your own agenda. Does it have to be that way in a book? Maybe cut out all the fat, Grimes? Yeah? I know, too late. I wasn't there. What I've picked up is that it's important in this life not to appear too enthusiastic about anything, as if in that way you can avoid disappointment. It was superstitious thinking. And it doesn't work, either; the disappointment is always just as bad.
I've always loved the Richard Jury and Melrose Plant mysteries by Martha Grimes--so very British! So I decided to try her "Emma Graham" series, with a 12 year old protagonist--and I'm really enjoying this first book in the series!Told in first person by 12 year old Emma, this book reads so quickly--and has such a wonderful attention to the types of details a young girl would notice. Her mother owns the Hotel Paradise and cooks there--Emma's descriptions of her mother's meals are delights in themselves. The hotel attracts a motley crew of characters--and Emma's grandmother, Aurora Paradise, sits on the 4th floor playing grande dame to all of them.Emma IS Nancy Drew, but even more feisty. She is trying to uncover the 40 year old mystery of a young girl's death, and in the process finds out MUCH more than she counted on!The only reason this book isn't 5 stars for me is that sometimes it seems a bit repetitive, but I still really enjoyed it, and already have the next two in my TBR pile: Cold Flat Junction and Belle Ruin.
What do You think about Hotel Paradise (1997)?
I really enjoyed this story, especially the 12 year old narrator. It might be a bit of a stretch to believe she is as mature as she is but given the amount of responsibility she's giving, I suppose she had to be. There were a few techniques the author used that I think worked very well. I liked that the setting was never quite clear, although in my mind it was the mid 1950s in New England. I thought it was quite interesting that the narrator's name wasn't given till the end, as if no one seemed
—Katherine
I read this in 7th grade, and, more than the Harry Potter series or any other book, this was the first book that really connected with me. I saw myself in the main character (whose name you don't find out until the last page) so clearly it scared me. Grimes captures her social awkwardness and the disjunction between the thoughts in her head and her ability to express them to others, especially people her own age, perfectly. She becomes a little manipulative in trying to solve the mystery, but you love her for it. The scenic descriptions are long (I mean like, pages long), but I found them enchanting. Though I have since read many more challenging (and probably better) books, Hotel Paradise set a sort of standard of enjoyment to which I've held every novel I've read since.
—Charles Keiffer
I don't think it's fair to give this book 1 star because I didn't "dislike" it... but I did think it was incredibly boring and finishing it was such a chore. It didn't create "negative" feelings, which some other one star books have done. If it hadn't been a book club book, I probably wouldn't have finished it, actually. I do respect the author's writing ability and her powers of description, which is also why it got bumped up to two stars, but I just kept waiting for something to happen. I didn't feel there was much of a plot and when I finished the book I was left wondering, "that's it?!!"
—Jessica
