4 out of 5 stars
Trigger Warning: This novel contains themes of death, violence, and abuse. There is a trigger index at the back of the book.
Welcome to Meadowbrook is a story of stories, beginning with a short poem by the author on how hotels are liminal spaces, which turns out to be important as the tale progresses.
A friendly letter from the author explains what inspired the novel and that the Meadowbrook Hotel was based on The Crescent Hotel, (a very haunted hotel in the USA), before the story starts.
The book can be read either from start to end or back to front, depending on if you want the backstory of the sinister hotel owner (Harold Dobby) straight away or if you prefer to fathom bits and pieces about him in a gradual manner, as if you are reading a detective story.
General overview: There was an interesting weaving of opposing elements in the book — water moves through the chapters in strange, rhythmic patterns, as does fire — and the characters move around each other in an intricate dance through time. I liked the almost totemic objects that cropped up in different stories and the subtle things some characters had in common with one another despite never having met before. The author included plenty of nice historical details but the book could have done with another round of proofreading.
Prologue: The book opens with a woman in 1938 who tries to get a cure for a terminal disease from a place “better than a hospital” and does not seem to be improving. She is moved into a section of the “hospital” that is very disturbing…
Chapter 1: we meet an old scifi writer who meets a junkie in a place that “isn’t a hospital” after checking himself in following a painful break-up. I loved the description of the hotel’s opulence in this chapter and the macabre twist at the ending was excellent.
Chapter 2: an older short story is referenced – The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins, which was a cool literary reference and added extra realism. There was good usage of wordplay in this chapter and I learned a few things I didn’t know, e.g. that there was a list in the olden days of acceptable reasons to have your wife “put away”.
Chapter 3: we learn more about the junkie from chapter 1. She meets with a child who seems to have travelled from the past… who is he?
Chapter 4: There was good use of contemporary historical detail with the clothing and attitudes of the 60s. In this chapter, the hospital / hotel is a big casino that hires a washed-up gambler. We meet the scifi writer here again, strangely enough. We also learn that it’s never a good idea to meet yourself in Meadowbrook…
Chapter 5: we get more of Nurse June’s story (she was a character in the junkie’s chapter). Meadowbrook is supposed to be a safe hotel for Black people in this time zone… but it’s not safe for anybody.
Chapter 6: a famous rockstar goes to the hotel while it is in a state of disrepair, planning his suicide, but for some reason his attempt doesn’t work…
Chapter 7: a man involved in a criminal gang finds himself staying the night in the dilapidated hotel while waiting for the ubiquitous Mr Dobby to draw up papers so they can buy the property with a view to transforming it into a casino… only the man meets a junkie and finds notes with a wide range of dates, written by different people, in a cubbyhole. The woman from 1938 pops up here briefly if you’re paying attention, and we get to know Mr Dobby’s first wife, who appears to be even more dominating and unpleasant than Mr Dobby. But is she?
Chapter 8: The hotel is a school for “wayward” girls. A teacher finds a malnourished boy in wet clothes and hides him from the nuns. He is covered in scars and bruises. Who is he? And how come some of the girls have familiar names? The mystery deepens like dark water…
Chapter 9: We meet Nurse June’s son. He meets Harold’s first wife, who gives him the grisly task of travelling back in time to when Harold was a child and killing him to end the constant time-travelling madness. We begin to wonder whether Mr Dobby is the bad guy after all, or whether it’s the hotel. Is the hotel sentient?
Chapter 10: we learn that Harold and his first wife met at Meadowbrook in the 1800s. Whilst she is still an unsavoury character, here we start to wonder whether Harold Dobby is the most evil one after all.
Chapter 11: we finally get Harold Dobby’s backstory, understand why he is like he is, and how it all started.
Epilogue: two urban explorers / ghost hunters find two of the earlier characters looking after the hotel grounds, making sure nobody enters the building.
I read an advance copy of this book for free — on Halloween, which was a great way to celebrate the day — and this is a voluntary review.
Nightwalks 