Noelle is an efficient and friendly hotel cleaner, a model employee. Or so she’d have you think. The trouble is that she can’t help taking little ‘souvenirs’ as she cleans. Nothing of value, just tokens of happy, normal lives: a lipstick, a hair clip, some tweezers. And by the time the guest has noticed, she’s long gone.
As she starts at her 21st hotel, she’s determined to beat her record of one month in a five-star hotel before suspicion falls on her. But when she meets her new colleagues, her plans are complicated. These women aren’t just hands pushing carts down lonely hotel corridors: they are women with lives full of happiness and worry, pain and joy. The kind of lives Noelle has never known how to live. They make her wonder what it might be like to have real friends, people to stick around for… Will the women at Hotel 21 give her the courage to claim the life she deserves, or will her old habits come back to haunt her?
Senta Rich became interested in the idea of a story about a hotel worker who stole little things as souvenirs when a disgruntled cleaner took her hairbrush from her hotel room years ago. She has committed boots and all to the character of Noelle, detailing her pursuits, her history and her excellent excuses for getaways with juicy rigour. Hotel 21 is Rich’s debut novel and it’s superb.
Noelle has a clear set of rules that she operates within to keep her kleptomaniac habits in check: ‘I have a first-day rule. Any sign of trouble, even a whiff of a problem, and I walk.’ But part of the problem is before she’s found out for collecting her souvenirs she has to move on. This means there’s twenty hotels behind her, nearly as many homes and most importantly, lost opportunities to truly connect. Noelle thinks of herself as a lone wolf and we are quickly taken into her confidence with Rich’s lively first-person narration.
Noelle is a fantastic protagonist, full of candour and complexity – it’s impossible not to like her. Rich offers a fabulously refreshing view of the hotel world, the camaraderie of the staff, the obliviousness of many of the clientele. She takes us deeper into Noelle’s need as the story unfolds. And just why she won’t allow anyone too near for too long.
Hotel 21 has a wonderful humour and Rich has captured the intimacy and joyousness of female friendships with vim and zest. There’s a sense of hope in the tone and the wonderful ability to find humour in darkness and pathos in light.
Hotel 21 is a story about courage, healing, claiming your worth and finding your tribe. It’s a feel good, heart-warming, life-affirming joy and I thoroughly recommend it.
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