Our Fortnightly Book Review

Radio Record, Volume V, Issue 13, 9 October 1931, Unnumbered Page

Our Fortnightly Book Review

GRAND HOTEL —

By

VICKI

BAUM

RNOLD BENNETT exploited, with notable skill aud audacity. fictional possibilities of the large hotel, its habitues, management and psychology. But ‘his method differed entirely from that employed in the novel under review, for there is the width of the poles between treatment of theme "py British and German novelist. When "Grand Hotel" appeared in 1920 it took the tiction-reading world by storm. It was so original and arresting, "so-exeeedingly candid and free from mauyaise honte, that everybody read it, intended to read it, or knew someone who had just read it. Now thet ~it ix procurable in the Dominion there is much talk thereupon among those who keep their library lists up to date, considerable diversity of opinion existing unent its art and ethics, and justice of its undeniable pinnacle as one of the year's best-sellers. . The authoress. it is understood, in this novel makes her first bid for suffrages of the literary public: but there is nothing wmateurish in its discursive and swiftly-moving account of the life that goes on inside revolving doors of a luxurious hotel in Berlin, which is typical of others in any large Continental city, with its thronging clientele in lounge, dining-room and private apartments. The whole yivid picture bears an extraordinary veracity of atmosphere, and it is not surprising to learn that the author, to attain _ literary verisimilitude, served us chambermaid in a large hostelry in order to study her quarry in intimate association. A memorable set of puppets is presented, from the hall porter who, white about the gills, pursues his duties breathing bard and walking on tiptoe, in momentary fear of bad news of his wife who is going to have a baby and is dangerously ill, to 2 permanent guest at the hotel, a war yictim, whose beautiful ascetic profile is coupled, on the other side of his "face, with 2 confused medley of seams and scars, in the midst of which shines a glass-eye-a "Souvenir from Flanders," as the eynic, humanitarian and drug fiend whe was Dr, Otternschlag described himself. -* .fo Grand Hotel comes grotesque and shabby Kringelkein, underpaid bookkeeper from a provincial town, who has come into a small legacy, which he desires to dissipate in seeing the world during the few mouths that remain to him of life. The poor little clerk, with his ragged moustache and shabby clothes, his blue eyes shining with a love of life and knowledge of death, is befriended first by the shattered doctor, and eventually taken in hand by Count Gaigern, a fascinating scamp, who introduces him to the gay world via motor-car, aeroplane, boxing match, night club and gambling hell. Then there is Preysing who endeavours to pyt through a business deal, making one in the coterie of men who sit and conduct business in all languages, selling stocks and shares and even life itself, after making a heavy breakfast. strewing newspapers on every table, and beleaguring every telephone-box. In his own town Preysing is a successful citizen, family man, careful spender, and grinder of his employees, "lemanding and receiving the unwilling homage of the groundlings. When crisis comes, however, he of the moral maxims topples from Pharasaical height, lapses from commercial probity. plunges into erotic amour, and being discovered, incontinently slays the debonair Gaigern, that engaging soldier of fortune, who having made burglarious midnight entry into Preysing’s apartment, inadvertently interrupts an affaire de coeur, described with astonishing frankness and aplomb ; Another amorous episode, presented with realism possibly not wholly acceptable to English convention, is the passion that sprang up, with littie preamble, between Gaigern, dandy, Quixote and crook, and the lovely dancer whose fame has declined with the swift passing of the years. Grusinakaya stig: vivdly presented, with "her figure ‘that’ seenied to be all joints, the unchanging beautiful oval of face. Her arms obeyed her will like wings, and the smile that shone from beneath her long eyelashes was itself a work of art." Exotic, temperamental, her body a miracle of grace, her long white throat, like a flower, adorned by those pearls that were a relic of the days of her Grand Duke, one suspects the swan-like beauty of being a portrait drawn from life. Another type of Bye, the eternal, is the flamboyant Flammchen, who

supplemented tedious typewriting earnings by amateur excursions into the realm of the world’s oldest profession, and whose undraped figure was so lovely that her photograph was sought assiduously, and secured to adorn advertisements for somebody’s soaps and scents. . A mutable and kaleidoscopic panorama, this tale of teeming life behind the scenes, of fevered pursuit of will- _ o'-the-wisp of desire, the whole in unusual presentment of human beings in the grip of that fate which flings prizes to unexpected quarters; the novel in its entirety being of a quality and cone tent that cannot fail to arouse contra | Versy.