HOTEL NOIR by Casper Silk_Review

Hotel Noir by Casper Silk

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


I reviewed a copy provided to me by the publisher on July 30 2012, via the Goodreads Group Making Connections, in exchange for my fair, honest, authentic review.


Review of Hotel Noir by Casper Silk

I consider this novel literary fiction in the vein of Graham Greene, a study of a small island culture, not so much forgotten by time as strangling in the chords of its own history and of the chains inflicted by the burgeoning drug culture combined with eternal poverty. Francis Stein is a failed literary lion, widowed years ago when his beloved pregnant wife died of a brain aneurysm, taking her life and that of their unborn son. Francis remains a rather solitary figure-a writer of philosophy rather than a novelist, he retains some wealth, but the direction of his heart and moral creed have put him on a serious cliff edge. Francis, like Germaine, the shepherdess saint from whom the island takes its name (and who figures over and over throughout the story), is a person too good for his life: every step he takes seems to cause only misdirection, confusion, and misunderstanding. His moral path is mostly righteous, yet he finds himself accused repeatedly of the worst crimes (of which he is not guilty), blackmailed, and threatened with grievous bodily harm. His is one of those lives which becomes irretrievable and irredeemable, a man who is a virtual Sisyphus, rolling a stone up the mountain only to find the boulder continually rolls back onto his head and smashes him.




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