So far, the books that I have chosen are mainstream books. Books you may know or at least recognize the author. In this case, I'm reviewing Hostel by the Sea because I know the author, and now I'm finally reading it. She self-published this book in 2012 on Amazon, and through the course of writing and editing it, she would talk to me about it. During these conversations, we had another silent one where she never asked me to read it and I never offered. Until now, I never read even a paragraph of her book. There were petty reasons for it. So petty that I won't even go into it. However, I decided that I need to get over those petty reasons and went to go take down the book from off of my bookshelf. She had given the book to me as a Christmas present a long time ago and it still sat there with a bow on it, never touched.
Now, I don't read a lot of autobiographies (besides accidentally reading Stephen King's autobiography in On Writing), and this book is autobiography during the time that she stayed in a hostel in Fort Lauderdale, Florida and her life during this time. So I am a bit out of my element because I normally only read and write fiction. I will try my best with this critique.
The first paragraph opens up with "Life is about experiences. That is my philosophy of life and I have conducted the latter part of my adult life accordingly (p.9)" It is a nice opening, and since I already know the gist of the book, it is thematically relevant. However, after the first paragraph, I felt the writing went down hill. The whole first chapter is a summary of backstory of how she ended up in the hostel. I found myself skimming the pages, waiting to get to the real destination, where the real story takes place. I know this chapter is suppose to show how she ended up in a hostel in Florida, but this information could have been done in a flashback.
In the second chapter, her descriptions were frequent and scenic. I could easily see the landscape that she conjured up in my mind. "Many of the surrounding buildings dwarfed the tiny hostel. A towering condo building across the street from the hostel blocked any possible view of the ocean. The condo was somewhat of an eyesore with its pink exterior and boxy design that hermetically sealed off its residents from the outside world (p.15)." Its descriptions sets up the contrast between the tiny, humble hostel and the towering, industrial condo.
After that wonderful description, I quickly realized that all we as readers get is description and narration. The more I read, the more I saw that the author wanted to rely every single minute detail of her real life. Which is fine, but we see it all in her head, not through other characters, too. This book totes that we readers will see colorful characters come to life in this book as she interacts with people from all over the world staying at this hostel. Since I already know the author, I wanted to see these other colorful characters.
So far in the second chapter, we only see their interactions summarized by the author, no dialogue. I realized, as a writer myself, I love dialogue and seeing the lack of it made me miss it. I started scanning the book, exclusively looking for a hint of dialogue.
After the fourth person the author comes in contact with, we get only one word spoken. It's not even dialogue, it's just the character's name. Why even put it in quotes? The more I'm reading this, the more guilty I feel for not being the author's beta reader. I could have pointed out some of these things. Next time you do something for petty, stupid reasons, just don't. She then proceeds to summarize her other room mates in the hostel. I don't want summaries; I want to see the characters live, and you only get that with dialogue! Give the other characters a chance to live and breath!
Okay, on page 23, we get two lines of dialogue but these lines not even happening consecutively. The character Nathan says, "No problem, Lu. I just happen to know how to crack the combination on locks." Then, a paragraph later, the author says, "Oh, that's where I put it! Nathan, I'm so sorry." I don't think I need to even explain the context of this interaction. The dialogue doesn't even add anything to the story or the characters. Then we get another summary, "The night was young, and the conversation flowed freely as guests mixed easily with each other. Some had been there for weeks and others, like myself, had just arrived. It didn't matter; we were all welcomed by the other guests indiscriminately and assimilated into the community." She is a good writer in terms of sentence structure and form. But in terms of heart, her writing is as sterile as an operating room. It's been meticulously scrubbed clean of all that yucky emotion. Wow, that's really harsh but completely true.
As the book went on, I thought it got more interesting. Again, I already know the author and her situation so nothing in the beginning was entertaining to me. However, as the story unfolded, I found myself skipping ahead to see what happens later. (There were definitely things about this time that she didn't tell me!) The story becomes intriguing with gossip and lies. There is the theme of following your heart or your heart (which do you chose?) as well as the theme of how work and personal life don't mix well and the fallout of that. And there's this layer of prophecy at the beginning that hints to something greater and along with this man that has this mystery around him. Those themes are interesting but it takes so long to get to these things. Also, it feels like these themes happen naturally, which is great. I'm glad that she wasn't hitting the reader over the head with them. But I felt that they could have been developed more.
It seems like her primary focus was chronological order (which I get since it is an autobiography but a story is a story) and adding in SO many details that really could be cut down. I didn't need to know every minute of her time at the hostel. Get to the gossip and this mystery man! I feel like she was so concerned documenting everything, she didn't think about what the reader would find interesting.
At the end of the book, I felt like the author was being more honest and open to how she felt and how the strained relationships took a toll on her. The last part of the book definitely had more heart.
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