06/24/2019
Centered on a rambling hotel in the Catskills, the striking latest from Price (The Grand Tour ) is part multigenerational saga, part murder mystery. In 1950, a young boy, Jonah, goes missing from the Hotel Neversink, and his disappearance kicks off a string of similar crimes that stretch across decades. The owners of the hotel, the Sikorsky family, avert scandal, until Jonah’s remains are discovered in the hotel’s basement in 1973. With no obvious suspects, the Sikorskys suffer the ups and downs of running a business associated with an unsolved murder, entertaining crime buffs and conspiracy theorists while the hotel—passed down from patriarch, Asher, to his daughter, Jeanie, and eventually to his grandson, Len—slowly loses its luster with vacationers, despite Len’s dedication to keeping the family business alive. Price focuses each chapter on a single character, which gives the work a novel-in-stories feel that periodically drifts from the hotel. As a result, the central mystery moves into the background, yet it never fully vanishes, wearing on characters without their acknowledgement as they face marital strain, addiction, and depression. Price is a sharp writer, and his novel wonderfully critiques family obligation while simultaneously delivering a crafty, sinister whodunit. (Aug.)
"The Hotel Neversink is an astounding literary feat—a murder mystery, a ghost story, a century-spanning family history, and a standup routine all in one, with dramatic variety to rival any Catskills floor show. Adam O’Fallon Price writes with the blackly comic energy of Philip Roth or Lorrie Moore, packing ten novels’ worth of narrative into this compact knish of a book. I wolfed it down in a couple of bites."
"Adam O’Fallon Price’s The Hotel Neversink , like its namesake, contains many rooms: behind this door, a tragic family saga; behind that one, a comic love story. And behind it all a mystery that keeps you guessing until the very end. Book your stay soon."
"Thoroughly absorbing... Spanning almost a century, The Hotel Neversink is a multi-layered tale of family, fortune, and fate that grows eerily compelling with every passing page."
"Price takes big risks that allow him to perform dizzying feats."
"A gripping, atmospheric, heart-breaking, almost-ghost story. Not since Stephen King's Overlook has a hotel hiding a secret been brought to such vivid life."
"The storytelling structure that Price has constructed will leave the reader slackjawed and eager to reread."
Booklist (Starred Review)
2019-05-13
Price's (The Grand Tour , 2016) second novel opens in 1931 in the small town of Liberty, New York, with the news that George B. Foley—eccentric transportation tycoon—has committed suicide. As Foley died without heirs, his property is sold at auction to local Jewish innkeeper Asher Sikorsky. Asher, a fiercely proud patriarch whom bad luck seems to follow from continent to continent, manages to transform both the building and his own fortunes, and—with the help of his wife and children—renovates the vacant manor into the thriving Hotel Neversink, crown jewel of the Catskills Borscht Belt circuit. And yet the tale Price pieces together over the course of his decade-hopping chapters—narrated by indomitable hotel manager Jeanie Sikorsky; her comedian brother, Joseph; Jeanie's earnest grandson Lenny and dissolute grandniece Alice; the taciturn hotel detective; a kleptomaniac second cousin who works as a hotel maid; and a loosely affiliated host of other Sikorskys or hangers-on—has more to do with the aftermath of the family's success than it does with their hard-won triumphs. In 1950, when a young boy disappears on the property, the hotel's idyll is rocked; in 1973, when 9-year-old Alice is assaulted in a basement storeroom where the missing boy's bones come to light, its long decline is inevitable. Yet even as the remaining Sikorskys fight over whether to maintain their family's legacy or cut their losses and thus save the family itself, there are those among them who wonder if the children who have disappeared from the towns and woods around The Neversink are victims of coincidence or part of a calculated plot to destroy the family. Part genealogy, part murder mystery, part ghost story, the book's ambitions overwhelm its scope. The result is a powerfully wrought novel of a specifically American place and time inhabited by appealing characters who are only fuzzily sketched. A last-minute revelation resolves the book's central mystery with unconvincing, explosive drama, and the reader is left wondering not what will happen next to the suffering Sikorskys but rather where all the careful nuance of the previous pages has gone.
A book of great ambition and promise that errs on the side of a poorly conceived plot.
Steven Jay Cohen brings a note of eeriness and elegy to his narration of Price’s Edgar Award-winning novel. This story traces the fall of the Sikorskys, Jewish-Polish immigrants who achieved the American dream with their purchase and renovation of the Hotel Neversink. Cohen channels the novel’s melancholy tone, describing the family’s damaged reputation when a young boy disappears from the hotel, and its steady decline once his bones are discovered. Cohen’s voice is perfectly weary as he recounts the experiences of the family as Alice survives a brutal attack and Len desperately schemes to save the hotel. Cohen narrates each character’s story in a similar tone, somewhat diminishing the nuances of this otherwise compelling listen. S.A.H. © AudioFile 2020, Portland, Maine
Steven Jay Cohen brings a note of eeriness and elegy to his narration of Price’s Edgar Award-winning novel. This story traces the fall of the Sikorskys, Jewish-Polish immigrants who achieved the American dream with their purchase and renovation of the Hotel Neversink. Cohen channels the novel’s melancholy tone, describing the family’s damaged reputation when a young boy disappears from the hotel, and its steady decline once his bones are discovered. Cohen’s voice is perfectly weary as he recounts the experiences of the family as Alice survives a brutal attack and Len desperately schemes to save the hotel. Cohen narrates each character’s story in a similar tone, somewhat diminishing the nuances of this otherwise compelling listen. S.A.H. © AudioFile 2020, Portland, Maine
