The Grass Hotel (Craig Sherborne, Text)

A woman suffering from dementia speaks to her son in her own idiosyncratic, damaged voice—her ‘wiring’ is gone. The mother-narrator’s son is introverted and perhaps on the autism spectrum: he doesn’t like being hugged, was ‘born numb’ and doesn’t make friends. As a child he self-harmed with a pocket knife. The boy’s parents (his father is called Twinkle, due to his ability as a salesman) learn their son has an affinity for animals. His truest friends are horses. When he wins money as a game show contestant he buys a property and sits in the paddock, calling it his grass hotel. He keeps two horses, Boy and Socks. The mother continues her monologue, through illness, the death of Twinkle and her own body slowly giving up. The Grass Hotel describes in detail the final years and months of a life. It pays homage to the body in all its vulnerabilities. Bodily fluids and excretions are repeatedly mentioned: blood, excrement, saliva, sweat, farts. In some ways the mother is like Chaucer’s Wife of Bath, a larger-than-life character who has experienced the world in her time. In death our narrator is ‘queen of my coffin’; she sits on ‘my throne chair with swelled legs’. For readers who enjoy modernist novels with highly stylised language, The Grass Hotel is an unsparing but humane portrait of a mother and son. 

Chris Saliba is the co-owner of North Melbourne Books. 

Category: Reviews