{"product_id":"the-swank-hotel-9781644450666","title":"The Swank Hotel","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eA stunningly ambitious, prescient novel about madness, generational trauma, and cultural breakdown\u003c\/b\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eAt the outset of the 2008 financial crisis, Em has a dependable, dull marketing job generating reports of vague utility while she anxiously waits to hear news of her sister, Ad, who has gone missing--again. Em's days pass drifting back and forth between her respectably cute starter house (bought with a \"responsible, salary-backed, fixed-rate mortgage\") and her dreary office. Then something unthinkable, something impossible, happens and she begins to see how madness permeates everything around her while the mundane spaces she inhabits are transformed, through Lucy Corin's idiosyncratic magic, into shimmering sites of the uncanny. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eThe story that swirls around Em moves through several perspectives and voices. There is Frank, the tart-tongued, failing manager at her office; Jack, the man with whom Frank has had a love affair for decades; Em and Ad's eccentric parents, who live in a house that is perpetually being built; and Tasio, the young man from Chiapas who works for them and falls in love with Ad. Through them Corin portrays porousness and breakdown in individuals and families, in economies and political systems, in architecture, technology, and even in language itself. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003ci\u003eThe Swank Hotel \u003c\/i\u003eis an acrobatic, unforgettable, surreal, and unexpectedly comic novel that interrogates the illusory dream of stability that pervaded early twenty-first-century America.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eBinding Type:\u003c\/b\u003e Paperback\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePublisher:\u003c\/b\u003e Graywolf Press\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePublished:\u003c\/b\u003e 10\/05\/2021\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eISBN:\u003c\/b\u003e 9781644450666\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePages:\u003c\/b\u003e 400\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eReview Citations: \u003c\/strong\u003e\u003ci\u003eKirkus Reviews\u003c\/i\u003e 08\/15\/2021\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003ePublishers Weekly\u003c\/i\u003e 08\/30\/2021\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eBooklist\u003c\/i\u003e 09\/01\/2021 pg. 37\u003cbr\u003e","brand":"Lucy Corin","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":40942183383221,"sku":"9781644450666","price":14.45,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0473\/0804\/6492\/products\/img_b5d96557-6a2b-49e2-b257-1de49cd71e4b.jpg?v=1630995997","url":"https:\/\/pastforward.org\/products\/the-swank-hotel-9781644450666","provider":"Past Forward","version":"1.0","type":"link"}