Product Description

It is a dream of electrifying eroticism and inexplicable violence, recounted by a young woman to her analyst, Sigmund Freud. It is a horrifying yet restrained narrative of the Holocaust. It is a searing vision of the wounds of our century, and an attempt to heal them. Interweaving poetry and case history, fantasy and historical truth-telling, THE WHITE HOTEL is a modern classic of enduring emotional power that attempts nothing less than to reconcile the notion of individual destiny with that of historical fate. 'I quickly came to feel that I had found that book, that mythical book, that would explain us to ourselves' Leslie Epstein, New York Times

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #114865 in Books
• Published on: 1999-12-02
• Binding: Paperback
• 240 pages

Synopsis
It is a dream of electrifying eroticism and inexplicable violence, recounted by a young woman to her analyst, Sigmund Freud. It is a horrifying yet restrained narrative of the Holocaust. It is a searing vision of the wounds of our century, and an attempt to heal them. Interweaving poetry and case history, fantasy and historical truth-telling, THE WHITE HOTEL is a modern classic of enduring emotional power that attempts nothing less than to reconcile the notion of individual destiny with that of historical fate. 'I quickly came to feel that I had found that book, that mythical book, that would explain us to ourselves' Leslie Epstein, New York Times

About the Author
DM Thomas was born in Cornwall in 1935. After reading English at New College, Oxford, he became a teacher until he became a full-time writer. His novels include The Flute-Player, Ararat, Swallow, Sphinx, Summit, Flying into Love and Eating Pavlova. He has also published memoirs, several volumes of poetry and translations of Pushkin and Anna Akhmatova. He now lives in Cornwall.

Customer Reviews

Cassandra opens Pandora's 20th century box perhaps?
This book has come back to haunt me- several weeks after closing out on the third reading - it's so stimulating it demands reading again and again.
It's an astonishing parabable of the first half of the last century.
Fascinating and disturbing - graphically violent and sexually explicit.
A fable of incredible depth - surreal and symbolic - mixing historical fact with fiction.
A blending of dark fantasy with psychological insight.
Written in phrophetic prose with ominous poetry - it is phantasmorgorical yet convincingly real.
Hallucinatory, dark and magical - unimaginable but believible.
A tragedy unfolds - telling the tale of the gradual demise and eventual degradation of a woman in an increasingly evil world.
Charting her psychosomatic illness, her brief joys and continuous forebodings - her constant sense of doom.
Occassionally harrowing - always rewarding.
If you found this book enthralling - I'm sure you'll be spellbound by Styron's 'Sophie's Choice' and Kosinki's 'Painted Bird' too.

Past, present & future
A really enjoyable read which takes you on a journey into the fevered mind of a young woman suffering from hysteria as she is treated by the psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud. What I admire about this novel is how skilfully Thomas allows the hidden meanings behind Lisa's hysteria to gradually emerge, but how things sometimes never appear as they seem, with Lisa herself an unreliable witness.

The novel is really a mix of sexual fantasy, buried memories and psychic power. Lisa's pain (left breast/pelvis) and fear to have children are finally revealed as a telepathic anticipation of the horrors of the Second World War and I admire the way Thomas juggles past, present and future in his narrative. It is a psychological puzzle which finally makes horrific sense.

My only criticism of the novel is its final, perhaps sentimental, conclusion. It did not seem to ring true with what preceded it.

Just read it
The reviews above say it all, and I have nothing significant to add to them. This is a magnificent book, stunning, a masterpiece. When I first read it, I was gripped by the poetry, the eroticism, and the mounting horror. I read the final chapter with tears streaming down my face. Bruce Kendall's advice is correct - don't read it expecting it to make sense from page 1. Just go with it, and by about half-way through it will start to make sense. By then end you will be staying up all night and turning pages frantically to see how Thomas resolves it. Not an easy book in any way - challenging on many levels, but ultimately life-changing. If you only read one book this year, make it this one. I cannot recommed it highly enough.