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I've never read anything like 'The Lonely Hearts Hotel' by Heather O'Neill. It's irreverent, perverse, and absolutely delicious. O'Neill's prose is so spontaneously gorgeous that it's like little fireworks of prose bursting on every page. What a wonderful way to start my reading New Year of 2018, although it is setting a very high bar. How can I be satisfied with less?

This book includes scenes of rape and child abuse, so if this is a trigger for you, do not read this book.

Rose and Pierrot both grow up at an orphanage in Montreal. Their childhood is one of scarcity and lack and punishments from the nuns for "virtually anything." From the soil of this depleted background, they nourished each other with their vivid imaginations. Sister Eloise comes to the orphanage and favors Pierrot with her attention and punishes Rose whenever she can. Seeing how the two children are drawn together, the nuns try to keep them separate, but Pierrot's talent for playing the piano and Rose's talent for dance and mimicry cause them to be thrust together and out into homes in the community as an entertainment team.

"They were so synchronized that it was hard for anyone in the audience to discern whether Pierrot was playing along to her dancing or whether she was dancing to his music. It seemed to everyone watching that they had rehearsed this number carefully for years."

Then, after years of being together, Pierrot is taken in by a wealthy philanthropist and Rose is sent to be a governess to two young children in the McMahon family. They are separated for a number of years, and these are not boring years to be endured as the reader waits for their reunification. Upon meeting the McMahon children, Hazel and Ernest, Rose introduces herself.

"When Rose walked back up to the nursery, she was wearing one of McMahon's suits and a top hat she'd discovered in a hall closet.
"I hear there were some children looking for me. I am Mr. Wolf."
Hazel stood up from her chair so abruptly that it toppled over behind her. She began applauding, so happy that she was getting a story without asking for one.
"Look at me. I'm not a monster. I just want some clothes so that I can get a regular job. Oh, perhaps I'll eat a child once in a while. That's my nature. But only the very naughty ones."

Themes that O'Neill explores are abandonment, women's roles, theatrics as a version of reality more real than life itself, poverty, depression, drug addiction, art and the imagination, and of course, the meaning of life.

This is a beautiful book. There's no way I can do it justice, especially now that my husband has gone to bed and turned out the lights in my room and there's nowhere else for me to escape to in my home for privacy to write. Sigh.