Women’s Hotel

DEBUT This is the first novel from Lavery, an essayist (Something That May Shock and Discredit You) and former “Dear Prudence” columnist for Slate. An author’s note explains that women’s hotels were a unique kind of housing for single women that had begun to disappear by the mid-1960s, when this novel takes place. The main character, if there is one, is Katherine, who is recovering from alcohol use disorder and has lived and worked at the second-rate Biedermeier Hotel in New York City since 1955, but so many other hotel residents pop in and out—from Dolly the lesbian bartender to Pauline the anarchist to Josephine the elderly pickpocket—that readers may need to take notes. There is very little plot; the residents simply live their lives, interact with one another, and muse about things. Like the Biedermeier Hotel itself, the mannered writing style seems to belong to a bygone era—more 1930s than 1960s.