Hotels, like all the other accessories of travel, like airports and train stations, are not-places. Hotel rooms are always familiar places but a little distant, chilly, anonymous. When a caterpillar turns into a butterfly, it first encases itself; then, once it is safely enclosed, it dissolves. From the soup of material the caterpillar leaves behind, a butterfly begins to assemble itself.
Some intimation of this possibility is present whenever you enter a hotel room—the cheaper the better. Just because you never does turn into a butterfly doesn’t mean it will never happen. But who has not rolled into a room with their suitcase and laid, fully clothed, on the sterile bed, feeling that they could, if they wanted, emerge having reconstituted themselves into somebody else altogether?
A piece that never happened last year, thanks to the general chaos of 2020, was a review of Eimear McBride’s book Strange Hotel. I think the book ended up slipping through the cracks in general, which is too b…