*****= An all-time favorite
**** =
Outstanding
***
= Above average
**
= Enjoyable
*
= Good, with reservations
***Hotel Bemelmans
by Ludwig Bemelmans
Reviewed January 20, 2004.
Ebury Press, London, 2002. First published in 1956. 302 pages.
Available on Amazon.com in paperback.
My husband found this delightful book in Cambridge for me. Who
would have thought that the creator of Madeleine led such a colorful
life?
Ludwig Bemelmans was born in a hotel in Austria. As a teen, he
lived in Regensburg, Germany, and was considered a disgrace to his family.
He didn’t pass his examinations at the Lyceum because he was “unruly, impertinent,
never serious, always late, and kept bad company.”
Next, he was sent to work in his uncle’s hotels, but got fired from them
all for one offence or another. Finally, his uncle gave him a choice
of reform school or America.
He went to America with letters of introduction from his uncle to other
hotel people. He ended up getting a job at the “Hotel Splendide”—the
finest hotel in New York.
This book tells amazing, funny, colorful stories of life behind the scenes
in an elegant hotel in the 1920s.
Ludwig Bemelmans describes people and things in unusual ways. For
example, one rich woman has “a face that had the texture of an old pocket-book,
on its worn-out corners rested the ends of a mouth that was closed to with
a snap. Grey, carmine and purple veins covered her face, and patches
of its skin would jump as does the skin on the flanks of horses when flies
come near them.”
The book is illustrated with Ludwig Bemelmans’ evocative line drawings.
It is filled with surprising adventures and colorful characters all lurking
behind the background of a high-class hotel. This book is entertaining
and diverting.
Book
Reviews by Sondra Eklund