This book, while written in 1971, still has lessons for our time--perhaps a depressing thought for us today, or a testament to Burton's writing and forward-thinking. She talks about basic issues of how to divide housework, how to deal with difficult issues of gender differences and divisions, and how to raise a family with positive values. This book is a good, quick read, and I recommend it highly.

Heartbreak Hotel is the story of women. Set around a group of women living and working together in the ultimate feminist museum, The Museum of the Revolution, Heartbreak Hotel shows how women are still struggling to gain a balance with identity, culture, and feminism in the post feminist movement era.

When one of their own is struck down in a hit and run motor cycle accident, the women of Heartbreak Hotel suddenly come under attack by the town government who wants to shut them down. The story is set mainly around these women holing up together and dealing with this 'attack'. These scenes are interesting as they present the women of Heartbreak Hotel working togehter, playing together, and fight together (and with each other).

The women themselves bring to mind Jungian archetypes. You get to meet an ex-nun (who may have left the monastery in body, but not necessarily in spirit), an ex-cop whose been thrown off the force and is very busy being pissed with everyone around her, a language genius who thinks in seven languages at a time, a woman so comfortable with her sexuality that she has little care for who hears her vibrator running, a wife/mother on the run from her family who is ate up with guilt for abandoning her husband and children, and a hunchback woman named Quasi (no kidding) who says not a word, but brings them all together.

This book is really great and often funny. There are many insights into the conflicting emotions that women have about themselves, other women, and the world around them. While the feminist movement may be beyond it's prime, from this book it is clear that there is much to be done, and that most of it needs to take place not within society, but within the hearts and minds of women.

Which brings me to the one point that I didn't like about this book. Like so much feminist literature, the author of Heartbreak Hotel seems to take the line that women should be accountable only to themselves. That what a woman wants, is what a woman should have, regardless of whether it is right or wrong, regardless of what her responsibilities are, be damned who gets hurt.

While I want women to be liberated from our patriarchal society, I just can't agree with that. Wrong will still be wrong. And as unpopular as it is to say in this day and age, people (women included) have responsibilities that need to be fulfilled whether they like it or not, whether it feels good or not. When this is recognized by the broader feminist culture is when feminism will move from it's current stage (rebellious teenager) to where it can be (glorious, mature womanhood).

This book was recommended to me by a friend, and I have never regreted taking the time to read it. The novel is full of unusual writing describing the occupants of the Heartbreak Hotel and their place of work, the Museum Of The Revolution. The occupants are what the book is really about. While they try to cope with the city's unacceptence of their existence, they reveal the truths, tragedys, and joys of growing up and being female. Burton manages to capture this with eloquence and accuracy unlike any other book I have read and consequently, I was able to identify with every woman Burton introduces - I could see parts of myself, or parts of other women that I knew in each character. With passages such as the following, who could help but fall in love with this sure-to-be classic of women's literature?

"Rita stares at the glints, and all of a sudden telescopes: sees herself clear as day a pubescent girl waking early in the morning, sun pouring in. She lies on her side and looks at her arm where the sun strikes the golden hair, makes little glints and sparks, is there too much hair? She wonders, do I look like a gorilla? Rita stares at her arm trying to see it the way a boy will, will he find it attractive, is it too thin, bony, oddly shaped, soft enough?, she runs her fingers around her elbow, is my arm beautiful, what will he think? Rita studies the premiere lesson of pubescent girls: not How do I see? But How do I look?"

Heartbreak Hotel is a brilliant book--a layering of complicated and intricate storylines coupled with a scathing and perceptive look at our society and its mores. A winner of many honors including the Maxwell Perkins prize, it is a pleasure that it has been republished by the prestigious Dalkey Archives. This book is funny, sad, difficult, and delightful. There have been PhD dissertations in Psychology written on this book, and it is no wonder when you reach the end and its satisfying, revealing summation. A marvelous book, especially in these times of slipping back into conservative ease with the status quo.