July 31 2026, 19:02

The Hotel

Author: Daisy Johnson

First published: 2024

In the opening chapter, a narrator lays out everything that is known about a haunted hotel. From there, we hear voices speak of their experiences, from a woman labelled a witch and drowned in a pond, to a builder who hears voices at night, a little girl who makes friends with someone only she can see, and so on. The land the hotel is built on is cursed and the hotel itself takes on a life of its own.

It’s labelled a novel, but really this is a slim collection of short stories about a place. I liked the evocative details and variety of voices. About halfway through I stalled because there wasn’t any narrative drive. It’s a series of crisply written ghost stories. The voices are all female, drawn to the hotel for different reasons, and most come to a bad end.

My favourite chapter is from the perspective of the house-ghost itself, an ever-changing thing who calls the hotel Mother. It’s a lighter note in a mostly bleak experience. In the hotel, men are not to be trusted, but neither are the women. It’s a cold world and death isn’t the end of it.

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