NAMED A BEST BOOK OF 2017 BY THE BOSTON GLOBE AND THE SAN FRANCISCO
CHRONICLE
So filled with vivid descriptions and complex characters that the
reader's experience is virtually cinematic. . . Utterly compelling. -
The Washington Post
From the author of When We Lost Our Heads, a spellbinding story about
two gifted orphans - in love with each other since they can remember -
whose childhood talents allow them to rewrite their future.
The Lonely Hearts Hotel is a love story with the power of legend. An
unparalleled tale of charismatic pianos, invisible dance partners,
radicalized chorus girls, drug-addicted musicians, brooding clowns, and
an underworld whose economy hinges on the price of a kiss. In a
landscape like this, it takes great creative gifts to thwart one's
origins. It might also take true love.
Two babies are abandoned in a Montreal orphanage in the winter of 1914.
Before long, their 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 clown routines, 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, sent off to work as servants during the Great
Depression, both descend into the city's underworld, dabbling in sex,
drugs and theft in order to survive. But when Rose and Pierrot finally
reunite beneath the snowflakes - after years of searching and desperate
poverty - the possibilities of their childhood dreams are renewed, and
they'll go to extreme lengths to make them come true. Soon, Rose,
Pierrot and their troupe of clowns and chorus girls have hit New York,
commanding the stage as well as the alleys, and neither the theater nor
the underworld will ever look the same.
With her musical language and extravagantly realized world, Heather
O'Neill enchants us with a novel so magical there is no escaping its
spell.
