(courtesy Penguin Books Australia)
What a marvellous creation, The White Octopus Hotel by Alexandra Bell is.
Set for much of its intriguing and compelling storyline at the titular magical hotel in Switzerland, the novel is a richly intoxicating and moving exploration of how grief manifests in all kinds of ways, in this case over wildly divergent times and in two people who cannot possibly have met, separated as they are by almost a century.
But Eve Shaw in 2015 somehow has a connection that she recognises down at the very core of her being with her favourite composer, Max Everly, a gifted man who disappeared, so the lore goes, in 1935 when the hotel itself shut down, and as The White Octopus Hotel gets going, that connection becomes all the more magical and impossible, and yet, so beautifully, arrestingly human.
The beauty of The White Octopus Hotel is that while it takes us on a journey where time does not bow to the conventions of our limited understanding, happily drawing people across decades and to long-lost points in time which supposedly have long disappeared into the past, it also cuts to the very heart of what it means to be human and how grief and loss can linger and corrode and drain our lives of all colour and meaning.
Certainly when we meet Eve, she is a pale imitation of someone alive, her work as a painting valuer at an august auction house as emotionally remote as everything else in her life.
Victor gave a shrug. ‘Maybe. Maybe not. There are only two groups of people when it comes to the White Octopus Hotel–those of us who believe in its magic and those who don’t. One thing I know, though, is that you’re holding a piece of the hotel right there in your lap, and if it found its way to you, then it did so for a reason. There will be something magical and remarkable about that octopus, even if you don’t yet know what it is. That’s how it works.’
Her very small “l” life gets a major jolt, literally in fact, when she is visited by an aged Max Everly who couldn’t possibly be in her offices in 2015 since he was born 116 years previously and, oh yes, is supposed to have walked out of the titular hotel 80 years before, never to return.
That would be enough to thrown anyone, but Max seems to know things about her that he couldn’t possibly know, including why octopuses are such an obsessive fascination for her, dominating her evocative artwork, her objet d’art and even the strange tattoo on her body which seems to have the body to change place at will.
While Eve is sure she hasn’t met Max before, an insistent niggle says she has and that what feels like a new connection in the second decade of the twenty-first century may in fact have started way back in the previous century.
But how is that even possible?
Ah well, that must be to left what this reviewer can guarantee will be the massively enjoyable reading of The White Octopus Hotel but suffice to say Bell more than delivers on the mystery and the intrigue and you will not finish the novel feeling even remotely cheated in any way.
In fact, the fate that can befall novels with fantastical premises which fail to live up to their imaginative promise is not even close to being an issue for The White Octopus Hotel which builds and builds into something quite wondrously moving and richly alive.
(courtesy Susanna Lea Associates)
The novel also benefits hugely from the fact that while it operates on a captivatingly fantastical level, it allows itself a great deal of time to simply focus on what it means to be human, the good and the bad, the happy, and pertinently, the desperately sad.
Both Eve and Max have been through the very worst that life can throw at him – Eve though searing trauma which shook her family to the core, and Max in the bloody trenches of World War One where death stalked every waking moment – and while they are ostensibly alive, much of what passes for life for them feels more like the actions of the walking dead than living, breathing humans.
That all changes during the course of The White Octopus Hotel which in ways that tantalise, delight and make you feel everything, takes Eve and Max on a journey that defies logic and rational but which connects deeply to what it means to be alive.
If you have ever lost someone or had your sense of safety and security or optimism for life thrown to the existential wolves, you will find a great deal with which to identify in The White Octopus Hotel which knows that great darkness can claim us when we least expect it but which also celebrates how life can redeem and heal if only we are brave enough to step forward when it offers us the opportunities to do so.
‘Why would a war horse haunt the steam baths?’ [Eve]
He [Max] shrugged. ‘Why would an eavesdropper haunt the Palm Bar or an octopus haunt the sixth floor? The White Octopus is not like other hotels.’
They began to retrace their steps through the heated chambers until they were back in the vast frigidarium. As before, there were several guests enjoying the Wellness Area, reclining on the benches, or reading newspapers. A sense of calm tranquility filled the space. Until the sound of hooves echoed upon the tiles.
In the case of Eve and Max, who somehow manage to surmount decades and life experiences in magically grounded and moving ways, the bravery required of them is immense.
They have fallen so far into the abyss of loss and grief and trauma that climbing back out is an audacious act in and of itself; but even more so, is the fact that when the hotel, and its equally intriguing inhabitants offer them doors to step through, and these are actual doors imbued with incredible magic and promise, they have to have the faith to believe that this step into the unknown offers hope and not more suffering.
It’s a massive step for anyone recovering from great pain and trauma, and if you have ever sought healing through therapy of any kind you will know exactly what that feels like, but immensely more for Max and Eve, not simply because of what is asked of them but when and where the request takes place.
Theirs is a grounded invitation, cognisant of the very worst and the very best of life, in an impossibly magical and fantastical set of time-defying circumstances, and it will change their lives if they accept it, rewrite the world and time as they know it, and deliver a path forward that may mean going backwards.
A novel alive with crushing sadness and vibrantly alive hope and reconnection, The White Octopus Hotel is magical is many enthralling ways but it is also at its heart, deeply, wondrously human, and it will capture to heart just as Max and Eve capture each other’s in ways that defy imagination but feel wonderfully and thrillingly human.