© Gautier Landivier
The second novel by a promising young author.
Hotel Argentina
or how to survive a confusing journey.
A vodka, please.
Going far away?
I don’t know,” I answered from the fire in my throat.
Where are you off to?
Buenos Aires.
At Roissy airport, Simon Koëtels gives himself a bit of space and a shot of vodka before setting off for the Argentinian summer. He’s off to Buenos Aires, with no stated reasons and no clearly defined goals. A one-way ticket to a city he knows nothing about. It’s a rough and powerful city he’s about to discover.
The story is set in January, the hottest month in Buenos Aires. Sitting at a café terrace in the Palermo district, Simon exchanges a few words with a stranger before having his satchel stolen by an Andean teenager. A few hours later, he receives a call: his bag has been found, and he is given an address to come and pick it up. This is how Simon meets Esteban Menger and, above all, the Hotel Implicite, where he is offered to stay.
Pierre Stasse’s second novel,
Hotel Argentina
is an invitation to an irrational journey. A young man’s discovery of Buenos Aires, revealed by the city and the people he meets. The South American megalopolis is undoubtedly the novel’s main character: a total, noisy city, where neighborhood brawls sometimes end badly.
In the background is the story of a family, a clan: the Mengers. Esteban is an aesthetic businessman and the head of the family group; his brother, Juan Pablo, is a colossal choreographer, fastidious and generous; sister Natacha is the self-effacing manager of the Implicite Hotel. And in the shadows, it’s the tutelary and paradoxically worrying figure of the Mengers’ father who will be decisive for Simon.
Pierre Stasse’s writing is chiseled, crafted in a sober, consistently romantic style. We become Simon from the second page of the novel. We are surprised when the personality of this young man, with no clear-cut future, is turned upside down. We watch helplessly as violence explodes, delve greedily into hidden family histories and return exhausted from this journey like no other. A book I gobbled up and which is now sleeping somewhere in Réunion Island.
Pierre Stasse,
Hotel Argentina
Flammarion
240 pages
Gautier Landivier
Cette publication est également disponible en : Français (French)
