Ioannis Pappos’s Hotel Living could be The Great Gatsby , reincarnated in a contemporary hell beyond even F. Scott Fitzgerald’s imagination. It’s harrowing. It’s smart and sexy; it’s funny and tragic. It is, in short, a great and terrible beauty of a book.” — Michael Cunningham, Pulitzer Prize-winner and New York Times bestselling author of The Snow Queen and The Hours
“If Trollope were alive today, and he wanted to write The Way We Live Now about New York’s élite consultants, he would have written Hotel Living . Really a terrific book.” — Edmund White
“Thrilling storytelling with universal appeal.” — Entertainment Weekly
“At once a cool-eyed satire and an unexpectedly heartfelt meditation on the meaning of home.” — Condé Nast Traveler
“Pappos is a first-rate storyteller and keen observer of our current moment. The prose here shimmers and the narration drives hard like the hard living lives in these pages. It’s a smart book that also happens to be entertaining…. I can’t wait for his next book.” — Anthony Swofford, New York Times bestselling author of Jarhead
“Sex, drugs and insider trading abound in Ioannis Pappos’ tale of one immigrant’s rise in the world of corporate finance. The lifestyles described tow the line between fascinating and sickening, allowing you to determine how harshly the characters deserve to be judged.” — Paste Magazine
“Welcome to the glitzy, high-octane world of . . . management consulting…. Plenty of storytelling verve to keep readers engaged.” — Booklist
“Pappos delivers a fast-moving narrative set in the new model world of the international business culture, junior division…. The sexual and social mores of a wired world…are well and truly captured through sharp conversations and vivid vignettes.” — Anthony Haden-Guest, author ofThe Last Party: Studio 54 , Disco , and The Culture of the Night
“Like a cross between The Wolf of Wall Street and Edith Wharton, Ioannis Pappos gets all the details right in this insider’s look at love and money in New York City in the post-millennial age. Pappos is such a good writer.” — Ira Sachs, writer and director of The Delta, Keep The Lights On , and Love Is Strange
“Ioannis Pappos may be the F. Scott Fitzgerald of the wired postmillennial age. Hotel Living is an unforgettable debut…about love, sex, class, greed, and the search for one’s humanity against the blinding light of the American Dream.” — Julia Fierro, author of Cutting Teeth
“You can’t for the life of you put the book down.” — Jason Diamond, Vol. 1 Brooklyn
“One of the most exciting coming-of-age books I have read since Bright Lights, Big City .” — Melissa McConnell, author of Evidence of Love
“As he romps through the highs and lows of the global economy, Ioannis Pappos will make you laugh even as he lays bare the very real human costs of our recent—and current—economic troubles. Hilarious and heartbreaking, Hotel Living captures perfectly our own interesting times.” — Scott Lasser, author of All I Could Get
“We’ve read and watched depictions of the reckless excess of our recent gilded age, but rarely do we get a glimpse into the inner life of one of its players. Hotel Living is The Wolf of Wall Street with a heart.” — Mike Albo, author of The Junket
“Pappos keeps the story moving at a great pace that nails the feeling of confusion when one chases a love that is often unrequited.” — Lambda Literary Review
“Hotel Living is nothing short of a masterpiece. It moved me and will continue to do so in more ways than I could imagine possible for a story told with such disarming clarity.” — Pappas Post
“This quick read rivals The Wolf of Wall Street in its provocative tale of excess—luxe hotels, insider trading, physical altercations and casual sex abound.” — Frontier , “10 Beach Reads”
Sex, drugs and insider trading abound in Ioannis Pappos’ tale of one immigrant’s rise in the world of corporate finance. The lifestyles described tow the line between fascinating and sickening, allowing you to determine how harshly the characters deserve to be judged.
Ioannis Pappos may be the F. Scott Fitzgerald of the wired postmillennial age. Hotel Living is an unforgettable debut…about love, sex, class, greed, and the search for one’s humanity against the blinding light of the American Dream.
Pappos is a first-rate storyteller and keen observer of our current moment. The prose here shimmers and the narration drives hard like the hard living lives in these pages. It’s a smart book that also happens to be entertaining…. I can’t wait for his next book.
Like a cross between The Wolf of Wall Street and Edith Wharton, Ioannis Pappos gets all the details right in this insider’s look at love and money in New York City in the post-millennial age. Pappos is such a good writer.
If Trollope were alive today, and he wanted to write The Way We Live Now about New York’s élite consultants, he would have written Hotel Living . Really a terrific book.
At once a cool-eyed satire and an unexpectedly heartfelt meditation on the meaning of home.
Ioannis Pappos’s Hotel Living could be The Great Gatsby , reincarnated in a contemporary hell beyond even F. Scott Fitzgerald’s imagination. It’s harrowing. It’s smart and sexy; it’s funny and tragic. It is, in short, a great and terrible beauty of a book.
Welcome to the glitzy, high-octane world of . . . management consulting…. Plenty of storytelling verve to keep readers engaged.
Pappos delivers a fast-moving narrative set in the new model world of the international business culture, junior division…. The sexual and social mores of a wired world…are well and truly captured through sharp conversations and vivid vignettes.
Thrilling storytelling with universal appeal.
We’ve read and watched depictions of the reckless excess of our recent gilded age, but rarely do we get a glimpse into the inner life of one of its players. Hotel Living is The Wolf of Wall Street with a heart.
You can’t for the life of you put the book down.
This quick read rivals The Wolf of Wall Street in its provocative tale of excess—luxe hotels, insider trading, physical altercations and casual sex abound.
“10 Beach Reads” Frontier
Pappos keeps the story moving at a great pace that nails the feeling of confusion when one chases a love that is often unrequited.
As he romps through the highs and lows of the global economy, Ioannis Pappos will make you laugh even as he lays bare the very real human costs of our recent—and current—economic troubles. Hilarious and heartbreaking, Hotel Living captures perfectly our own interesting times.
One of the most exciting coming-of-age books I have read since Bright Lights, Big City .
Hotel Living is nothing short of a masterpiece. It moved me and will continue to do so in more ways than I could imagine possible for a story told with such disarming clarity.
This quick read rivals The Wolf of Wall Street in its provocative tale of excessluxe hotels, insider trading, physical altercations and casual sex abound.
“10 Beach Reads” Frontier
At once a cool-eyed satire and an unexpectedly heartfelt meditation on the meaning of home.
Welcome to the glitzy, high-octane world of . . . management consulting…. Plenty of storytelling verve to keep readers engaged.
2015-04-16 An intrepid rising star in the business world longs for intimacy in Pappos' debut novel. By a stroke of luck, Stathis leaves his fishing village in Greece at age 13 to attend school in Athens. He later becomes a graduate of Stanford and enters an international MBA program at the European Business School in Paris. Although he gets used to a jet-set world of money and hedonism, a part of him is just the son of a fisherman at heart. When he meets Erik, a journalism student who writes a scathing article about EBS, Stathis quickly falls in love with him even though they have wildly different lifestyles and values. While their relationship continues for several years, Erik, a trust-fund kid who has never known what it's like to be poor, looks down on Stathis' work as a business consultant. It doesn't help that Stathis travels so much for work that he spends most of his nights in various hotels. Eventually, his hectic schedule and their different values tear them apart. Later, Stathis finds comfort in a housing arrangement with Tatiana, the 20-year-old daughter of a famous Hollywood actress. With Tatiana, Stathis enjoys cocaine and threesomes and, in some ways, a greater sense of home than he had with Erik. Tatiana is by far the most interesting character in the novel, but she doesn't appear until the second half. Much of the writing is crude, and the central relationship between Stathis and Erik never takes off. The storyline dedicated to Stathis' work as a business consultant, including his "Innovate through Simplicity" brand that wins him a promotion, is full of jargon that does nothing to draw the reader in. A joyless and basically plotless novel about a rootless existence.