Hotel Iris: A Novel [Paperback]

The beautiful cover of this slim novel, an hotel bedroom window looking over a wide sea, suggests a gentle romance -- something fleeting, a little sad perhaps, but tender. Ogawa's previous novel, THE HOUSEKEEPER AND THE PROFESSOR, about the affection between an old man, a young woman, and a child, leads one to expect a similar beauty here. And when this novel begins to sketch a tentative, courteous friendship between a lonely girl of seventeen working in her mother's seaside hotel and a much older man, one settles in for a bittersweet novella of romantic initiation such as might have been written by Elizabeth Bowen or Anita Brookner.

Wrong! But also right. For no matter where the story goes (and it takes us into some strange territory indeed) it retains some of those qualities of eager innocence, a bud that opens in the span of a single summer. But nothing about the book prepares the reader for the R-rated content. The girl, Mari, first encounters the older man (simply referred to as "the translator" since he ekes out a living translating from Russian) when her mother throws him out of the hotel after a noisy row with a prostitute. Bumping into Mari some days later, he is apologetic and almost old-fashioned in his meticulous courtesy; we assume that this was a one-time occasion that will not be repeated. But Mari, it seems, was equally attracted by the man's power and sense of danger. More than once, she lets him take her to his home on an island a short ferry-ride from the town, and all that happens there is embraced by her as much as by him.

Some readers may be disturbed by the explicit action. But the truly disturbing aspect is the clarity of the author's insight into Mari's mind. Ogawa refuses the easy categories of predator and victim. Short though the book is, she achieves an exquisite balance between innocence and experience that turns a four-star subject into a five-star achievement. I cannot help thinking that she must have taken Thomas Mann's DEATH IN VENICE as her model, inverting its viewpoint and moving it to Japan. She has written a worthy homage, if so.

Seventeen year old Mari is narrator of the Hotel Iris. Her life is not the kind of life any girl her age, or anyone for that matter, would envy. A high school dropout, she lost her father to a violent death at the age of eight, and now she spends her days and nights working the front desk, among other duties, at the Hotel Iris which is owned by her mother. Mari is clearly not only a lonely girl, but an emotionally damaged one as well. Her father's death and the treatment she receives from her mother, who is who is constantly barking orders and criticizing her, have not helped her self esteem.

The hotel is a shabby seaside hotel, presumably in Japan. The only other hotel employee besides Mari and her mother is a kleptomaniac for a maid. The hotel is rarely busy off season, in fact oftentimes its only customers are prostitutes and their clients. One day while Mari is working the front desk a loud commotion and fight ensues in Room 202. A man in his 50's chases a woman, obviously a prostitute, out of the room. He yells, "Shut up whore" at the woman. When Mari hears his voice yelling at the woman, her reaction is, "when giving orders......his voice is beautiful". This, of course, is in contrast to the way her mother orders her around all the time.

When Mari later sees the mysterious man in town she decides to follow him, wanting to find out more about him. Once she meets him, she follows him to an isolated island cottage, there she finds out he is a Russian translator, and what follows is a sick sadomasochistic relationship.

The writing is gorgeous and it is easy to feel a sense of place.......

"The storm had broken over the island by the time we emerged from the pantry. Rain beat against the windows, the wind swirled and the surf washed deep into the cove. Waves crashed on the rocks below shooting deep white spray in the dark. The roar of the sea and the howling of the wind shook the whole island. The translator turned on the light in the room".

You can feel the some of the sick, painful moments as well.....

"He undressed me with great skill, movements no less elegant for all the violence. Indeed, the more he shamed me, the more refined he became---like a perfumer plucking the petals from a rose, a jeweler prying open an oyster for its pearl".

OR....

"For me, a superb penalty that would have never occurred to anyone else. He dragged me into the bathroom and cut off my hair".

MY THOUGHTS -- In some ways this book was like a horrible car crash you pass on the highway--you don't want to look, but you can't help yourself. I felt the same way about the book, I wanted to turn my head, but the beautiful writing just would not let me quit. The writing hooked me from the first page of the short (164 page) novel. Because the story is so short, I never felt I totally understood what was going on inside of Mari's head, and why she was so obsessed about continuing to see the unnamed translator; her obsession with him was unshakable. It is tough to read in parts, but in the end, I am very glad I read this novel. RECOMMENDED - 4.5/5 Stars

This is an odd book in many ways. This is my first venture into Japanese fiction, so the disconnect may well be with me and not the author. A young girl becomes fascinated by an older man. They have an affair that lasts one summer. She is subjected to extremely degrading treatment. End of story.
There are flashes of beautiful writing. The prose is taught and sparse, but in the end the novel fails to deliver. The older man, simply known as "The Translator" appears completely inauthentic and his schizophrenia is not convincingly developed. Odd characters like a nephew with no tongue and a blind woman called Iris who comes to stay at the hotel from which the novel takes its name simply never come to life.
Worst of all, the young girl who narrates the story, Mari, fails to crystallise in the reader's mind at all. The thrall under which she falls to the older man is never fully explored. What drives it? An inherent masochistic tendency? Merely feeing from an over-bearing Mother and the spectre of a prematurely deceased Father? The detachment with which she describes her complete sexual humiliation at the hands of the older man somehow fails to be as horrifying as it should. Equally, the attraction she professes to feel for the man who, is his public guise, appears to be shy, diffident, charming and well-mannered, also rings hollow.
I can't help feeling that the author has been too sparse in their treatment of the subject. The important themes examined here should have been more fully fleshed-out. In the end, the strange detachment of all of the principal characters backfires and affects the reader.

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