(courtesy Hachette Australia)
Working out when you should walk away from something you love is always tough.
The reason you’ve stuck out a particular gig for so long is the very thing that keeps you anchored there, and while longevity of occupation in a particular place or occupation doesn’t always have to mean staleness and exhaustion have set in, there is inevitably a sense of all it all becoming too much.
Things that were once a walk in the “I can handle this with my eyes shut” park suddenly feel like the weight of the world pushing down upon you; or in the case of Carl, longtime manager of the über luxurious Grand Abeona Hotel, which roams the Milky Way pampering high-paying guests as it goes, as if an entire galaxy worth of intrigue and realpolitik is pressing on and into you.
The engagingly warm and supportive protagonist of The Floating Hotel by Grace Curtis (Frontier), Carl’s first encounter with the hotel was when it arrived over his planet when he was a boy and he decided to escape a world of abuse and neglect by stowing away in its luxurious surroundings.
Taken in by the hotel’s inclusively caring then-manager, Carl, some four decades later, is now a very welcome part of the furniture, beloved by (most) guests and staff alike, a man who is as much a part of the Abeona as its fittings and exemplary service.
That evening, for the first time in who knows how long, Uwade opened the hardshell case, took out the holophone inside, and coaxed a tune out of it. A soft and lonely thing. It felt good to play the old chords again, to sing the old words. Like visiting home.
Unseen by anyone, out in the hallway, the pianist Angoulême was passing, fingers trailing the wall. The music was a soft barrier. First she slowed, then stopped completely, It was the alert stillness of an animal, ears pricked, listening for the call of a fellow beast through the undergrowth.
Or the swoop of death from a higher plain.
But as The Floating Hotel opens, Carl is tired.
He likely won’t admit it to himself since the hotel is home, but just like the establishment itself, which has left its carefree, random planet-hopping days behind it and now follows a predictable and set itinerary that never varies, and which is feeling a little worn at the edges, his time there has seen better days and it’s a question of whether he should wrap things up now or keep soldiering on.
He isn’t actively seeking to leave and this warm, charming and gleefully funny but emotionally meaningful novel makes it very clear he loves being there, but with time ticking on and an autocratic galactic ruler not keen to relax the rules and let the various worlds under his rule do their thing as they see fit, there is less and less room, physically and chronologically for Carl to freshen things up.
Still the luxury show must go on and so even as Imperial spies seem to be ridiculously thick on the ground and surly academics, onboard for a conference, are wrestling with a mysterious code that could upend everything, and strange love poems end up lobbying into everyone’s very physical inboxes, Carl and the Abeona keep doing their thing even as events suggest they might be better simply stopping now.
But in the spirit of the start of this review, how on earth do you call time on something that has sustained and nurtured you, which is home down to the very marrow of your bones and the absence of which would be felt keenly and painfully?
Much of that pain would come from saying goodbye to a ragtag bunch of people who have found their way to the Abeona by various means, a found family who come alive under the assured hand of Curtis who imbues each and every one of them with a meditatively thoughtful backstory which brings the slowly percolating but action-rich narrative alive with real human meaning and empathy.
While The Floating Hotel is undoubtedly written in a deliberately light and engaging style, do not mistake for the lacking in emotional muscularity or depth.
It is full to the brim with beautifully written life stories intersecting with the machinations of a body politic which brooks no descent, which sees the supremacy of humanity as the pinnacle of all life and which cannot countenance a reality where other forms of life may actually exist.
It’s a highly unwelcoming universe out there but on the Abeona, for all its rarefied trappings, there is warmth, love and inclusiveness, a place so unlike the various worlds out there, many of which are brutal, dark places with little to recommend them and a lifespan that precludes getting too attached anyway, that staying onboard the hotel seems like the sanest move you could make.
But little bit by little bit, Curtis starts to boil the water so to speak, and while the whole frogs boiling slowing in it idea has long been discredited and anyway, Carl is too smart and intuitive to ever be fooled or caught unawares by anything, you get the sense as The Floating Hotel continues on its merrily engaging way that change if coming, like it or not.
Carl was quietly adrift. In his office, but not there either. Not anywhere. His own mind trailed behind him like a helium balloon. It was an old childhood trick — to step away when the present moment got too hot, watch from a far for a while. But Carl wasn’t a kid anymore and he couldn’t let go. They were in a mess. His mess! I need to get back to myself, he thought.
So this is where we find Carl and the Abeona, caught between a glorious past, a fading present and an uncertain future with everyone, including Carl, unable to imagine a time when the hotel may not be home.
But it appears that time is coming, even if Carl is the only one to really pick up on it, and this sense of all good things coming to an end, imbues every last page of this wondrously good novel which feels like a great big hug but one which knows that even the best of things come with a finality that cannot be escaped.
A joy to read, The Floating Hotel sparkles because of its rich characterisation, a storyline which builds and builds imperceptibly but with assurance and solidifying intensity and a knowing understanding of the way in which the most certain and rock solid of things can soon feel like dust falling through our fingers, bringing on a goodbye no one wants to utter but which may have to be said far sooner than anyone expects.
The Floating Hotel is one of those deliciously perfect novels that feels all sugary and light, warm and welcoming, buoyantly alive and crisply joyous but which is threaded through with the darkly unwelcome certainties of life.
However, while these darkly conspiring elements might look like they will consume everything good they come into contact with, they find their match in The Floating Hotel with its attendant love, belonging and inclusivity which may seem insubstantially fluffy, particularly against the might and inevitability of an authoritarian galaxy but which hold a power all their own and which may yet see off the very things that seek to end them.