Based Upon Availability

At first listen, this audiobook seems like a gossipy glance behind the doors of a Manhattan hotel, but the lives of the eight women who pass through those doors are too filled with longing to offer such lighthearted diversion. Therese Plummer's performance is deft, even though the shifts in point of view are initially difficult to detect. Once the listener is accustomed to the book's structure, however, the novel is engrossing, even though the scenes offer a rather negative commentary on women and what they want. These women want most what is not available to them--lost love, a baby, a home, sobriety, or a feeling of control--and, despite Plummer's confident performance, their stories can be tough to enjoy. L.B.F. (c) AudioFile 2010, Portland, Maine

April 5, 2010
Strauss's stellar first novel (after story collection The Joy of Funerals
) chronicles the loneliness of New Yorkers loosely connected by the swanky Four Seasons hotel. Hotel manager Morgan, Strauss's strongest protagonist, longs for the company of her older sister, Dale, who died of leukemia as a child. She's in a go-nowhere relationship and hoping to find a friend in Trish Hemingway, an artist and gallery owner who reminds her of Dale. Trish, meanwhile, is coming to terms with growing apart from her best friend, and she's not fully over her fiancé, who left her shortly before they were to be married. Subplots play out and scenes are revisited courtesy of a number of perspectives—hotel employees, friends and family, hotel guests—creating a near mosaic with twinges of darkness, thanks largely to the strange and unexpected things that go on behind hotel doors: the s&m gear Morgan steals after snooping in a guest's room, an abused woman found tied to a bed. Strauss's ending, which strives to be hopeful, comes off as abrupt; otherwise, this is quite sublime.