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    A Private Hotel for Gentle Ladies
    Unavailable
    A Private Hotel for Gentle Ladies
    Unavailable
    A Private Hotel for Gentle Ladies
    Audiobook11 hours

    A Private Hotel for Gentle Ladies

    Written by Ellen Cooney

    Narrated by Cassandra Campbell

    3/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this audiobook

    It is 1900 in a small, prosperous Massachusetts town. Charlotte Heath, a lively, independent redhead of humble beginnings, is married to the scion of the powerful Heath family. When, on her first outing after a long illness, she spies her husband, Hays, bending to kiss another woman in the village square, impulsive Charlotte heads her horses straight out of town. Unsure where to go but certain that she wants to leave both Hays and the stifling, if luxurious, life of the Heath household behind, Charlotte makes her way to Boston and checks in at "The Beechmont: A Private Hotel for Gentle Ladies," where she makes another startling discovery: the classy Beechmont is a rather unique institution, where handsome porters make discreet, late-night visits to its all-female clientele. Charlotte finds herself surrounded by a cast of characters that will delight the reader as she settles into life at this reverse brothel: Harry Alcorn, the hotel's dashing and prescient proprietor; Miss Berenice Singleton, the bohemian painter who holds a kind of salon in her rooms; the scowling cook, Mrs. Petty, who once worked for the Heaths and is determined that Charlotte not stay on at the Beechmont; the charming and handsome "porter" Arthur, who both gives pleasure and makes trouble; and the venerable lady doctor Lily Heath, her husband's aunt, whom Charlotte is amazed to find among the hotel's regulars.

    In the midst of a dizzying sexual enlightenment, Charlotte must puzzle out why she really left Hays and why he seems to have left her first. Her task is to determine whether she can forgive him and to discover where, if anywhere, she truly belongs-an adventure that takes her farther afield than she could ever have imagined.

    Ellen Cooney has given us a remarkable portrait of a historical moment and an irresistible protagonist. Fresh, high-spirited, and wonderfully seductive in the telling, A Private Hotel for Gentle Ladies carries the reader along on a woman's unforgettable journey to self-enlightenment.


    From the Hardcover edition.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherPenguin Random House Audio
    Release dateDec 6, 2005
    ISBN9781415925362
    Unavailable
    A Private Hotel for Gentle Ladies
    Author

    Ellen Cooney

    Ellen Cooney is the author of A Private Hotel for Gentle Ladies and other novels. Her stories have appeared in The New Yorker and many literary journals. She has taught writing at MIT, Harvard, and Boston College, and now lives with her dogs Andy, Skip, and Maxine - who are, each in their way, rescues.

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    Reviews for A Private Hotel for Gentle Ladies

    3/5

    55 ratings4 reviews

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    • 3/5
      This has been on my to-read list for years, so long I don't remember what about the recommendation caught my attention. Whatever it was I didn't see it in the book. Yes, it was good, incredibly well-written, interesting/bordering on crazy characters. But...again I can all but taste the MFA in Creative Writing wafting off this. What is it about Adult Literary fiction that treats life in such a detached and distant way? And makes endings as non-committal as possible. Bottom line, good but not illuminating.
    • 1/5
      An incredibly boring book. Promised a lot and delivered nothing. I was all for expecting some kind of thrilling, silly, Victorian love affair. Instead I got a pointless and mind numbingly boring account of a bland woman's stay in the most sleepy and unrealistic bordello ever. This book was a complete waste of time.
    • 4/5
      An interesting look at family and societal relationships in turn-of-the-century Boston. A long-invalid woman discovers her husband's infidelity and runs away to the city where she finds an eccentric world of lovers and independent women before finding herself. I wasn't particularly impressed with the ending.
    • 5/5
      This is a wicked little book -- I loved it.