Christmas at the Women’s Hotel: A Biedermeier Story by Daniel M. Lavery

 

Reviewed by Jeanne

Manhattan, the early 1960s:  the Biedermeier Hotel is home to a number of women of various ages, from the young and eager to the elderly and infirm.  All are just scraping by, so for some the Christmas season offers an opportunity to earn much needed extra money. Most are content to pick up extra jobs as window dressers or sales clerks. 

Lucianne has a better idea:  she’ll start a service providing male escorts for young women who want to attend various functions but who don’t want to go alone.  She knows several young men who can be trusted to behave like gentlemen and who will cut a respectable figure. Of course, Lucianne will get a cut of the fee. . . .

Katherine, the first floor manager, has been estranged from her family for years but is cautiously hopeful when she receives a letter from a younger sister.  It’s the first time anyone from the family has reached out.

And then there’s Josephine, a retiree whose methods of picking up some extra cash are definitely not legal.

Author Daniel Lavery uses his characters from The Women’s Hotel to good effect in this holiday novella.  While it can be read as a standalone, Christmas at the Women’s Hotel would be better appreciated if one had read the first novel.  I had not, so I admit I was a bit overwhelmed with all the characters.  What kept me reading was the writing: I love the author’s sense of humor and way that he phrases things.  Of Lucianne, who is from a socially prominent family, he writes, “She was not self-conscious about her age, but she was certainly aware that it could no longer benefit her socially, though it had not as yet begun to count against her.” Of another character he writes that she was “thought of as something better than a nuisance but less than a friend.”

He also makes the 1964 time period come alive, which I really enjoyed.  I liked that not all the problems were solved or that some resolutions were not what I would have hoped.  Perhaps those endings are for another book. It felt realistically festive instead of  saccharine.

If you’re looking for some nostalgia reading set in the Big Apple, this can be an entertaining choice.