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A review by arianappstrg
The White Hotel by D. M. Thomas
challenging
dark
sad
tense
medium-paced
4.75
4,75: I is confusion. Do I shove this at the very back of my shelf or do I keep it within arm's reach? I hate it but then I don't. I really like it but then I remember the last chapters. I remember the last chapters and I think they are so powerful and violent which makes them all the more real but then I don't want them to be real. One minute, I want to snuggle up and read this again, the next I want to bury it in the garden and hide under my blanket. Still undecided.
The White Hotel has a compelling selection of storytelling mediums/devices that make it lively, intense, and eerily real. Including letters, postcards, case studies, poetry, and prose it fleshes out our heroine, Elisabeth Erdman, and the situations and company she finds herself in with acute detail. Freud being a character also contributes considerably in making the novel read more like a historical documentary/ scientific journal and not so much as fiction. At the same time, the parts including Freud's psychoanalytic attempts were the ones that annoyed me the most. That's odd, even unconventional coming from me because I have a soft spot for the guy and generally get excited when he's quoted, mentioned, or fictionalized! So, I was on cloud nine when I discovered he is a character in this one. But all was not rosy after all.
Going into this book, which starts off with an explicitly pornographic poem and which is also blurbed as having to do with the Holocaust, I was only expecting to experience some kind of weird blend of fear, sensuality, and impending dread and torture. I was not expecting to be rolling my eyes at Freud's whimsical, phallocentric interpretations of poor Elisabeth's dreams and memories. Between Elisabeth's first fragmented experiences at the hotel, which are steeped in eroticism, and her tragic end which left me trembling with a mix of anger, fear, and disgust, Freud stuck out like a sore thumb. That is not to say he is completely irrelevant to the plot. On the contrary, he is most useful in the sense that he psychoanalyses Elisabeth for us, giving us insights into her mind that we would not have access to from her perspective. She is the unreliable narrator to end all unreliable narrators. But, because he is Freud, his analysis is biased and structured in such a way as to fit his own narrative and his own idea of the woman, that is, woman as hysterical, sex-crazed, scorned by the father banshee that is in denial of this or that and imagines things that aren't there.
It's up to you if you want to roll with it or not. I chose to roll with it because, after a certain point, I felt like I was supposed to get distracted and side-tracked by Freud's observations. If you choose to follow his train of thought, it is easy to see that he sticks to what he knows as a way to deflect from what is to come. In retrospect, I think Freud is as uncertain and frightened as Elisabeth. He too can feel that something terrible is coming but he can't pin it down so he carefully avoids any confrontation with it whereas Elisabeth admits to her fantasies and her physical and mental torment and wishes to deconstruct it, find its origins, find a cure. The clash between them is very interesting to read. As is Thomas's insidious transition from mellifluous, dreamy, almost transcendental erotica to pure torture, antisemitism, and genocide. All these, boiled down, fall under a wider context of sex/birth versus death, and the way he intertwines them allows him to create a really twisted, multi-layered, transgressive reality in which human beings are capable of the most debasing and dehumanizing acts. It is at once exhilarating and horrifying because it is real life.
It is safe to say, I have never read anything like this before and part of me wants to read it again because I am sure a second read will open my eyes to details I missed but another part of me, the part that was horrified by the sudden turn of events, wants to forget this book exists. The irony here is that D.M Thomas prepares you for what is to come but you don't quite know it until you have reached the point of no return. It is little details, features that you wouldn't really spare a second look at, such as Elisabeth's striped dress, allusions to war imprisonment, stars and breasts falling from the sky, a pain in the chest that you cannot explain, and the white hotel itself, as a structure, as a space of confinement from which you never really escape. Unbeknownst to Elisabeth and to us too, who follow her in the story, her writings, dreams, troubles, and aches build up to and, to a certain extent, predict one of the cruelest, blackest, darkest moments in history.
Due to the intensity and the sensitive subject matter of the book, I recommend reading it whilst in a good place, mentally. It will fuck you up anyway but at least being in a good place mentally ensures you'll bounce back more easily.
The White Hotel has a compelling selection of storytelling mediums/devices that make it lively, intense, and eerily real. Including letters, postcards, case studies, poetry, and prose it fleshes out our heroine, Elisabeth Erdman, and the situations and company she finds herself in with acute detail. Freud being a character also contributes considerably in making the novel read more like a historical documentary/ scientific journal and not so much as fiction. At the same time, the parts including Freud's psychoanalytic attempts were the ones that annoyed me the most. That's odd, even unconventional coming from me because I have a soft spot for the guy and generally get excited when he's quoted, mentioned, or fictionalized! So, I was on cloud nine when I discovered he is a character in this one. But all was not rosy after all.
Going into this book, which starts off with an explicitly pornographic poem and which is also blurbed as having to do with the Holocaust, I was only expecting to experience some kind of weird blend of fear, sensuality, and impending dread and torture. I was not expecting to be rolling my eyes at Freud's whimsical, phallocentric interpretations of poor Elisabeth's dreams and memories. Between Elisabeth's first fragmented experiences at the hotel, which are steeped in eroticism, and her tragic end which left me trembling with a mix of anger, fear, and disgust, Freud stuck out like a sore thumb. That is not to say he is completely irrelevant to the plot. On the contrary, he is most useful in the sense that he psychoanalyses Elisabeth for us, giving us insights into her mind that we would not have access to from her perspective. She is the unreliable narrator to end all unreliable narrators. But, because he is Freud, his analysis is biased and structured in such a way as to fit his own narrative and his own idea of the woman, that is, woman as hysterical, sex-crazed, scorned by the father banshee that is in denial of this or that and imagines things that aren't there.
It's up to you if you want to roll with it or not. I chose to roll with it because, after a certain point, I felt like I was supposed to get distracted and side-tracked by Freud's observations. If you choose to follow his train of thought, it is easy to see that he sticks to what he knows as a way to deflect from what is to come. In retrospect, I think Freud is as uncertain and frightened as Elisabeth. He too can feel that something terrible is coming but he can't pin it down so he carefully avoids any confrontation with it whereas Elisabeth admits to her fantasies and her physical and mental torment and wishes to deconstruct it, find its origins, find a cure. The clash between them is very interesting to read. As is Thomas's insidious transition from mellifluous, dreamy, almost transcendental erotica to pure torture, antisemitism, and genocide. All these, boiled down, fall under a wider context of sex/birth versus death, and the way he intertwines them allows him to create a really twisted, multi-layered, transgressive reality in which human beings are capable of the most debasing and dehumanizing acts. It is at once exhilarating and horrifying because it is real life.
It is safe to say, I have never read anything like this before and part of me wants to read it again because I am sure a second read will open my eyes to details I missed but another part of me, the part that was horrified by the sudden turn of events, wants to forget this book exists. The irony here is that D.M Thomas prepares you for what is to come but you don't quite know it until you have reached the point of no return. It is little details, features that you wouldn't really spare a second look at, such as Elisabeth's striped dress, allusions to war imprisonment, stars and breasts falling from the sky, a pain in the chest that you cannot explain, and the white hotel itself, as a structure, as a space of confinement from which you never really escape. Unbeknownst to Elisabeth and to us too, who follow her in the story, her writings, dreams, troubles, and aches build up to and, to a certain extent, predict one of the cruelest, blackest, darkest moments in history.
Due to the intensity and the sensitive subject matter of the book, I recommend reading it whilst in a good place, mentally. It will fuck you up anyway but at least being in a good place mentally ensures you'll bounce back more easily.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Confinement, Genocide, Rape, Sexual assault, Sexual violence, Torture, Antisemitism, and Murder
Most of the warnings I have included are related to scenes taking place in the last two chapters, mainly 'The Camp'. There is sexual content all throughout the book, in fact, it starts with a pornographic poem but I consider that one to be moderate in terms of descriptiveness and it also comes across as consensual. That being said it doesn't classify as a warning. It is certainly overwhelming, I will say that much, but the consensual aspect of it makes you see it in a positive light. However, everything that happens in 'The Camp' and after that sent chills down my spine and I flinched quite a lot so you have been warned. This book will do a one-eighty on you out of nowhere and the places it will take you are far from nice.