Right in time for the summer holidays, Senta Rich’s debut novel is a sharp, easy read about a hotel cleaner who steals from guests as a way of managing painful emotions from her past. Noelle, an Englishwoman in her 20s, moves across the UK from one job to the next, never settling too long in one location, always leaving after the first accusation, before suspicions can be confirmed. She is, in many ways, a woman on the run from her own life, a fact that is immediately evident from the book’s evocative opening lines: “I have a first-day rule. Any sign of trouble, even a whiff of a problem, and I walk.”
Hotel 21 has a catchy title, a great premise and solid plot momentum from start to finish. The unusual perspective of a cleaner makes for an engaging viewpoint. Rich involves the reader in the world through descriptions that feel authentic and work to highlight the procedures and precarity of the job: “We’re trained not to move guest items unless absolutely necessary … I heard on my first day how all the cleaners were searched routinely at the end of every shift – bags, lockers, jackets and pockets.”
The second hook is the mystery behind Noelle’s behaviour and life choices, the fact she lives alone in a flat without basic furnishings or provisions, has no friends or family, eats baked beans and toast every evening and owns only a couple of items of clothing beyond her work uniform. The most vibrant and detailed part of her life is her stealing: “I slipped my hand in, pushing down, deep to the very bottom, where smaller items like forgotten lip balms live.” Listed at the start of each chapter are her spoils from various hotels over the years, small, insignificant “treasures” such as biros and tweezers that she stores away in a locked chest.
The narrative arc of the book is simple: in Noelle’s new job at Hotel 21, a gang of four women colleagues offer her friendship, connection, a way out, if she is willing to let them help her. It is an effective structure that speaks to the author’s background in screenwriting. Originally from London but now living in Dublin, Rich’s work has featured on RTÉ, BBC, Amazon Prime and other international and European networks. Her debut novel has already been optioned by MGM for TV.
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Comparisons to Convenience Store Woman by Sayaka Murata and Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine by Gail Honeyman are merited in terms of the oddball protagonist trope, but less so in the writing. Rich has a notable weakness for tired language, which lessens the impact of the narrative overall. There are numerous cliches throughout the text, from wiping smug looks off faces to uncontrollable sobbing, red flags to suits pressed to an inch of their life. Elsewhere, sentences made up of multiple cliches make one wonder about the speed of the editing and redrafting process: “Some even muster a smile, others barely give me the time of day … I was putting myself in the firing line, as it was a lose-lose situation.”
Other issues include a tendency to overexplain the protagonist’s motivations, a pattern of action, explanation, action, justification. As the past gets unpicked, Noelle’s mother emerges, with all the neglect, violence and drinking, as a worse version of Annie’s Miss Hannigan, though Rich’s portrait of a villain gains more dimension towards the end of the book, fittingly in line with Noelle’s wider reckoning and awakening: “She doesn’t know what to do, I thought, because she doesn’t know who she really is. And suddenly I felt pity for her. She was a woman with no identity, which was why she could so easily adopt a new one.”
There is a genuinely moving reversal-of-fortune story underpinning Hotel 21, a novel that has strong up-lit vibes, ideal for readers looking for escape (who isn’t, these days). Rich is skilled at characterisation; each of Noelle’s colleagues is distinctly and vibrantly drawn, with problems of their own. Their determination to save the newest member of the team is admirable, an escapade full of gleeful energy.
Noelle herself is equally intriguing, a woman who admits that she “trained myself long ago never to give in to [crying], and now, all these years later, I barely remember what it feels like to even want to”. Over the course of the narrative, Rich carefully reveals her protagonist’s secrets, those she tells others, and more interestingly, those she tells herself.
