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    The Two Hotel Francforts: A Novel
    Unavailable
    The Two Hotel Francforts: A Novel
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    The Two Hotel Francforts: A Novel
    Ebook272 pages4 hours

    The Two Hotel Francforts: A Novel

    By David Leavitt

    4/5

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    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this ebook

    It is the summer of 1940, and Lisbon, Portugal, is the only neutral port left in Europe-a city filled with spies, crowned heads, and refugees of every nationality, tipping back absinthe to while away the time until their escape. Awaiting safe passage to New York on the SS Manhattan, two couples meet: Pete and Julia Winters, expatriate Americans fleeing their sedate life in Paris; and Edward and Iris Freleng, sophisticated, independently wealthy, bohemian, and beset by the social and sexual anxieties of their class. As Portugal's neutrality, and the world's future, hang in the balance, the hidden threads in the lives of these four characters-Julia's status as a Jew, Pete and Edward's improbable affair, Iris's increasingly desperate efforts to save her tenuous marriage-begin to come loose.

    Gorgeously written, sexually and politically charged, David Leavitt's long-awaited new novel is an extraordinary work.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherBloomsbury USA
    Release dateOct 15, 2013
    ISBN9781608195992
    Unavailable
    The Two Hotel Francforts: A Novel
    Author

    David Leavitt

    David Leavitt's first collection of stories, Family Dancing, was published when he was just twenty-three and was a finalist for both the National Book Critics Circle Award and the PEN/Faulkner Prize. The Lost Language of Cranes was made into a BBC film, and While England Sleeps was short-listed for the Los Angeles Times Fiction Prize. With Mark Mitchell, he coedited The Penguin Book of Short Stories, Pages Passed from Hand to Hand, and cowrote Italian Pleasures. Leavitt is a recipient of fellowships from both the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts. He divides his time between Italy and Florida.

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    • 4/5
      Lisbon in 1940 was filled with people who were hoping to leave the continent as quickly as possible. Pete and Julia Winter, American ex-patriots, have reluctantly fled Paris and are staying at the Hotel Francfort while awaiting passage home on the SS Manhattan. While eating breakfast one morning at the Suica Café, they meet another American expat, Edward Freling, and his British wife Iris, who are also planning their journey home on the Manhattan, and who, by coincidence, are staying at the similarly named but different Francfort Hotel. Over the two weeks, the couples become deeply entangled with one another, with life-changing consequences.Leavitt, as always, writes gorgeous prose. He successfully conveys the increasing desperation of the masses of people stuck in Lisbon at the start of World War II, particularly in his portrayals of the Fishbeins, a Belgian couple caught in a bureaucratic nightmare of invalid visas that threatens to leave them without the possibility of escape. At the same time, he writes hauntingly of the more individualized but no less desperate state of Pete and Julia and Edward and Iris as marital infidelity shakes their psychological foundations in unexpected ways. But the real genius of the book is its surprise ending: the last 25 pages, which amount to a “postscript” by Pete after returning to America, reframe the entire story that came before, while also providing a sly meta-commentary on Leavitt’s own writing.
    • 5/5
      Leavitt is one of my favourite prose writers. He writes beautifully in a deceptively simple prose style while pulling you into the lives of his characters. Two American couples meet in Lisbon in 1940, driven to the western edge of Europe by the advancing Nazis. What appears to be a simple gathering together of fellow Americans waiting for the Manhattan cruise ship to arrive and pluck them out of war torn Europe and take them back home turns into something quite taut and filled with grave possibilities when the two husbands begin an affair with each other. Slowly you get the backstory of these people - how they met and married and how they ended up in Europe and what circumstances brought them to this point. Stories within the story. Hidden stories that mould the characters into who we see sitting at a cafe drinking coffee, waiting, while Lisbon fills up with desperate people. Iris, the British wife of Edward, is an amazing character drawn very finely, a personality that is both tragic and brave. Pete, the narrator, is a car salesman who just rather got on with his life, a slacker according to his brother who got him all his jobs; married to Julia who wanted romance with a capital R, living in Paris because that's where she wanted to live. But Lisbon wakes Pete up to a realisation: Edward didn't fear the future, but only the past. The past with his wife and inability to face what he really is. "Whereas what I feared, I saw now, was the present, its endless prolongation, hour to hour, week to week, year to year. A landing stage, a holding pattern, a way station." Lisbon, the way station for hundreds of thousands of people fleeing Nazi Europe, was a true defining point for Pete and changes his life forever.
    • 3/5
      I like David Leavitt's books but I was luke warm about The Two Hotel Francforts. The prose is easy. It moves right along but I wasn't sold on the construciton of the book that felt make shift towards the end. I felt I could give it only three stars.
    • 3/5
      Lisbon in 1940, filled with expatriots who are try to get out of Europe and escape Hitler. Two couples meet and their lives become intertwined. Perhaps I felt uncomfortable as I read this because I was unable to relate to the main characters who seemed shallow and self-serving.
    • 4/5
      Set in Lisbon in 1940, this is the tale of two expat couples waiting to sail to America in advance of the Nazi regime's steady progress westward and Portugal's perceptible adoption of fascist and anti-Semite policies. Still, Lisbon feels like a safe place to be and our lead characters are ambivalent about leaving Europe altogether. Leaving Paris was bad enough. Peter, our narrator, is married to Julia and having an affair with Edward (who is married to Iris). The four of them settle into an uncomfortable routine centering around meals together and with a four-hour block built into every day during which Peter and Edward can be alone together. Iris is absolutely aware of the affair and even contrives to support it, but Julia is presented as fragile and dependent, incapable of tolerating this infidelity (no comment). Peter's passion for Edward and his increasingly unhappy sense of duty to Julia become the foreground in this novel; in the background is the political and social scene to which these privileged Americans (okay, Iris is English but she has a U.S. visa) are largely inured. Julia, in particular, is so consumed by her grief at leaving their elegant apartment in Paris, which had been featured in Vogue, and returning to New York, which she had sworn she would never do, that she has little room for compassion or care for people whose very lives are endangered and who have no avenue for escape. The Manhattan, on which our main characters plan to sail, will absolutely not be accepting anyone without a US passport or visa. We learn early in the novel that Julia is Jewish and that she will, in fact, not return to New York. For the rest of the novel, as Leavitt reminds us of these facts, we wonder what is going to happen to her? In the end, I was more moved by the demise of Daisy, the charming elderly wire fox terrier belonging to Iris and Edward, than by what transpires for Julia. I don't doubt that this was intentional on Leavitt's part. I've not read other works by Leavitt and I understand that this novel is less dark than some of his others, despite the time and place in which it is set and the rather sordid machinations among our four main characters. Leavitt's writing is deceptively straightforward; he effectively uses subtle metaphor and minor side plots. The novel flirts with comedy, even, but Leavitt carefully navigates around that temptation, holding steadily to a wry and even tragic compass setting. Primarily an exploration of the travails of marriage, The Two Hotel Francforts also provides an intriguing peek into Lisbon during this time of WWII.
    • 4/5
      Fancy finding yourself in neutral Lisbon in 1940? Only if in finding oneself there, you also find love. Think Manning's _Balkan Trilogy_, but with some homosexuality thrown in. A very concise and spunky Manning with some Graham Greene (_The End of the Affair_ without the religion) also in the mix. A gem!
    • 4/5
      Lisbon in 1940 was filled with people who were hoping to leave the continent as quickly as possible. Pete and Julia Winter, American ex-patriots, have reluctantly fled Paris and are staying at the Hotel Francfort while awaiting passage home on the SS Manhattan. While eating breakfast one morning at the Suica Caf?, they meet another American expat, Edward Freling, and his British wife Iris, who are also planning their journey home on the Manhattan, and who, by coincidence, are staying at the similarly named but different Francfort Hotel. Over the two weeks, the couples become deeply entangled with one another, with life-changing consequences.Leavitt, as always, writes gorgeous prose. He successfully conveys the increasing desperation of the masses of people stuck in Lisbon at the start of World War II, particularly in his portrayals of the Fishbeins, a Belgian couple caught in a bureaucratic nightmare of invalid visas that threatens to leave them without the possibility of escape. At the same time, he writes hauntingly of the more individualized but no less desperate state of Pete and Julia and Edward and Iris as marital infidelity shakes their psychological foundations in unexpected ways. But the real genius of the book is its surprise ending: the last 25 pages, which amount to a ?postscript? by Pete after returning to America, reframe the entire story that came before, while also providing a sly meta-commentary on Leavitt?s own writing.
    • 3/5
      Leavitt’s prose is elegant and he manages to bring the reader along at a fairly brisk pace despite its seeming almost languid. This is deceptively difficult to achieve and demonstrates his writing prowess. The setting—Lisbon 1940—is threatening and one expects the mood to be darker than it was. This is the case because these four characters are not really part of the history, except with respect to finding places to have trysts, their next leisurely meal or a drink. They are on hiatus and behave as if they were merely tourists, instead of fleeing the Nazi menace. This seems unusual especially since two of them are Jewish and should be at risk. The characters are self-absorbed with little interest in the historical significance of their situations and the general ambiance does not realistically convey what probably was a chaotic time and place.Leavitt’s wrapping up many of the story’s loose ends in the last couple of chapters seems to be an afterthought. In retrospect, I think the novel is mainly a literary exercise designed to disprove several truisms about what does and does not constitute a good novel.
    • 3/5
      The Two Hotel Francforts tells a story readers may never consider when thinking of World War II. It tells the story of the people you never think about, not the soldiers or their families, not the Jews, not the Nazis, but those so uninvolved, it makes you wonder how many stories have gone untold.The story is an interesting take on the part we never think of during a war, the waiting period. Here we have two couples who, by happenstance or serendipity, meet while waiting for transport back to America, a land yet untouched by war. While in the safe zone of Lisbon, Julia and Peter Winters stumble (or perhaps it was planned) upon Edward and Iris Freleng , all unimportant lives in an era of conflict. Author David Leavitt proceeds to tell a tale deceptive and painful for all involved, with intense character development and descriptions. All characters are egotistical, needy and self-absorbed, each in their own way. And Leavitt drags the reader through drama filled pages and it isn’t until the end that we realize these flaws. As relationships and loyalties shift, drama ensues and the one character avoided throughout the story is essentially omniscient and revealing in the end – bringing it all together.This is a tangled tale of passion, longing, disappointment and deceit. Are these people really who they say they are? This story definitely calls into question everything we think about love and marriage. Do we really love anyone but ourselves? Do we even really know anyone? Though quite wordy at times, long-winded and anticlimactic, it shows how much can change in just a few short days. It’s World War II meets murder mystery, with a touch of infidelity, homosexuality and depression.
    • 5/5
      I had forgotten what a great author David Leavitt is. I had trouble in the beginning liking the narrator but as the story unfolds, I really was hoping for some type of happiness and possible redemption.