Hotel Milano - a novel

It would have been 1985/86 when I met him. I had been lying on a towel and drinking a glass of beer when he joined our group. When I say "our group," I mean the group of friends with whom I had arrived on that hot afternoon. In fact, it was so hot that Verona's open-air swimming-pool was the only sensible place to be  during a heat wave. So - that is how I remember my one and only meeting with this individual but so far away is that place where memory beckons that I cannot be exactly sure of details. Was I still drinking beer at that first meeting or had I already given it up? But I digress! 

"Tim" was the name of the new arrival and all faces were turned towards him when Alex announced him as a writer friend from Verona University. 

Let me digress again! I like to think that ideas of my becoming a writer were developing at that time. I was already 33 or 34 years old but I had never met a real writer, so I turned to look at the man. I admit that I was (unreasonably) disappointed to see a rather nondescript individual standing behind me in a pair of ill-fitting swimming shorts. I was disappointed because I imagine I had been expecting something more of a "real" writer, something more like a messiah or a Hollywood film star. Almost 40 years have passed since that day, and I now realise how absurd my reaction was. I somehow thought that writers were larger than life, quite literally the so-called giants of literature. I crossed my mind that Tim might somehow recognise a fellow writer-in-waiting by the way I was lying, drinking my beer  or by the fact that I was already reading a book.  But he did not even look at me. Alex, on the other hand, seemed delighted at being able to introduce such an individual. At the time, I wondered if his friend's calling had somehow rubbed off on him. After all, Alex was writing himself and had literary ambitions. 

For some reason I avoided Tim Parks' books over the subsequent years. Perhaps, I was put off by an unreasonable suspicion that Tim had been ignoring me or that he saw me as a threat. What utter nonsense that was. So - I am not happy to say that over the  subsequent 40 years I ignored Tim Parks and his books until a couple of weeks ago when I picked up "Hotel Milano" and finished reading it within a week.  

The novel has our main character (I hesitate to call him a hero) stuck in a luxury hotel in Milan at the beginning of the corona epidemic. He meets a refugee family and thinks about friends and lovers from his past. But above all, he muses on his life in a pleasant, clever and self-deprecating way. I have to say that it was a pleasure to read this book and to be stranded with the protagonist in the hotel. More than this, it was encouraging to see that my first faltering impressions of Tim Parks, made so long ago, have been proven to be so misplaced and that I had moved on and was able to appreciate his fine writing.  

 

Comments

[Christopher Goddard]

On the theme of being stuck in an hotel, 'A Gentleman in Moscow' might interest you...

[Robert John Goddard]

I just looked it up. Looks interesting! Have you read it?