Edith and David

What did you make of their affair, and what was David's culpability, if you will? I harbored an idea that he really actually loved her but that he was passive in his own right (the family commitments and whatnot), so the understanding that this could only be an affair was sort of how he proceeded. But I might have felt the romance from Edith's point of view and missed the more objective clues.

The scene where she recounts how she watches him interact with his wife and her realization they would make love that night was, I thought, one of the more poignant moments. The emotional pain of being the other woman seemed palpable.

And what of her sending him a telegram at the end that she's coming back. A happy ending? A fool's paradise?

The places we'd go

I have this childlike pleasure in what I guess I’d call resort fiction – like a civilized desert island of charming amenities and quirky characters. Hotel du Lac sounded so marvelous – not a high and narrow bed and veal-colored curtains, mind you, but so many other details: “Its furnishings, although austere, were of excellent quality, its linen spotless, its service impeccable.” Also: “There was no sauna, no hairdresser, and certainly no glass cases displaying items of jewelry.” And a bar where drinking was discouraged! Hehe.

I’m trying to think of other books with this sort of escapist thrill. There’s Agatha Christie’s “At Bertram’s Hotel,” not one of her better stories but all about a fine and old-fashioned hotel of a bygone era with two pages dedicated to a high tea that might tempt you to change your citizenship. Of course there’s Something Going On there, or there’d just be the tea. Or even “The Shining,” creepy though it is, giving over to the hotel as really its own character dwarfing the main players. (I would really love to visit the Overlook Hotel some summer; wouldn’t that be a fine road trip?)

Do any fictional or real-life travel tales bring back fond memories for you? Did anything from Hotel du Lac tickle your fancy?

The places we’d rather not go

Then there’s Hotel du Lac as a sort of rest home for the shady or cast-off well-to-do – I love that! “In this way the hotel was known as a place which was unlikely to attract unfavorable attention, a place guaranteed to provide a restorative sojourn for those whom life had mistreated or merely fatigued. Its name and situation figured in the card indexes of those whose business it is to know such things. Certain doctors knew it, many solicitors knew it, brokers and accountants knew it … Those families who benefit from the periodic absence of one of their more troublesome members treasured it.”

And yet that seemed to cast such an air of melancholy about the place, for all the participants to basically recognize they were society’s damaged goods for one reason or another. You know, they may deserve their own posts, but that common factor changed my perception of each character – to see the inhabitants as more fragile and pitiable save for Mr. Neville and his predatory and perceptive dealings.

Exile

I wrestled with the complexity of Edith’s retreat to Hotel du Lac and how much was suggested, ordered or self-imposed, made all the more elusive by the fact Edith’s “indiscretion” – leaving her groom at the altar – wasn’t revealed until at least two-thirds through the book. Her docility seemed part of finding her life unbearable – she couldn’t be alone, couldn’t sustain her affair on its terms, couldn’t settle for a companion like Geoffrey – and she couldn’t bear to be at home, but she couldn’t bear to be away. So what part of exile was her own will and what part was that suggestive nature of hers to do what others wished – that was one of the more satisfying components of the story. Would she grow up, find herself or what have you was so much more of the tale than whether she reunited with her lover.

A time and a place

What did you initially make of the setting of “Hotel du Lac”? It felt English, or Continental, to me right out the gate, but I struggled with getting the time period in my head. Some of it was the very un-American customs: tea in the salon, dress for dinner, like glamorous travel of a bygone era. But more so there was this premise that Edith was in a social exile and that the notion of a woman of scandal being sent away seems so antiquated. Like reading in an Edith Wharton or Shirley Jackson story of a young woman visiting a faraway relative for precisely ninth months and nobody says a word. The copyright date was ’84, and the clothing brands fit with that, but the story almost seemed timeless, like it could have harkened back 40 years or more.