The Lonely Hearts Hotel

A Novel

De: Heather O'Neill

Narrado por: Julia Whelan

NATIONAL BESTSELLER

Longlisted for the 2017 Baileys Women’s Prize for Fiction

A Globe and Mail Most Anticipated Book

A NOW Magazine Book You Have to Read

A Toronto Star Book We Can’t Wait to Read

“Heather O’Neill is just getting better and better.” —The Globe and Mail

“It would be hard to overstate here just how the good the writing is in The Lonely Hearts Hotel. For it is stunningly, stunningly good.” —Toronto Star

“By the end I was a gasping, tearful mess.” —Miranda July, author of The First Bad Man and No One Belongs Here More Than You

“O’Neill is an extraordinary writer, and her new novel is exquisite.” —Emily St. John Mandel, author of Station Eleven

Set in Montreal and New York between the wars, a spellbinding story about two orphans whose unusual magnetism and talent allow them to imagine a sensational future, from bestselling, two-time Scotiabank Giller Prize finalist Heather O’Neill

The internationally acclaimed author returns with a stunning national bestseller in The Lonely Hearts Hotel. Exquisitely imagined and hypnotically told, it is a love story with the power of legend.

Two babies are abandoned in a Montreal orphanage in the winter of 1914. Before long, their true talents emerge: Pierrot is a piano prodigy; Rose lights up even the dreariest room with her dancing and comedy. As they travel around the city performing for the rich, the children fall in love with each other and dream up a plan for the most extraordinary and seductive circus show the world has ever seen.

Separated as teenagers, both escape into the city’s underworld, where they must use their uncommon gifts to survive without each other. Ruthless and unforgiving, Montreal in the 1930s is no place for song and dance, depicted by O’Neill as “a voyage across Montreal, from realms of innocence and districts of longing to zones of cruelty” (National Post). When Rose and Pierrot finally reunite they’ll go to extreme lengths to make their childhood dreams come true.

A powerfully written and narrated story

This beautifully written story follows two exceptionally talented children, growing up and making there way through the great depression, amongst powers that want to destroy them. The narrative is about the exploration of innocence: its power, its attraction, and its repulsion. The characters, although a metaphor, are themselves extraordinary and relatable and lovable. From the very beginning I want to be them. I want to be around them. The author uses language so poetically you'll want to rip pieces of this book out and frame them around your house. Or have passages tattooed on your body.

Heather O'Neill has made this world a little more beautiful. And has made me want to cherish and fear the innocence I see in myself and in others. The narrator makes the book come alive. Both people should be showered with awards immediately. There are not enough stars on all of Audible to appropriately rate this book.