Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    The Lady Matador's Hotel: A Novel
    The Lady Matador's Hotel: A Novel
    The Lady Matador's Hotel: A Novel
    Ebook230 pages3 hours

    The Lady Matador's Hotel: A Novel

    By Cristina Garcia

    4/5

    ()

    Read preview

    About this ebook

    National Book Award finalist Cristina García delivers a powerful and gorgeous novel about the intertwining lives of the denizens of a luxurious hotel in an unnamed Central American capital in the midst of political turmoil.

    The lives of six men and women converge over the course of one week. There is a Japanese-Mexican-American matadora in town for a bull-fighting competition; an ex-guerrilla now working as a waitress in the hotel coffee shop; a Korean manufacturer with an underage mistress ensconced in the honeymoon suite; an international adoption lawyer of German descent; a colonel who committed atrocities during his country’s long civil war; and a Cuban poet who has come with his American wife to adopt a local infant. With each day, their lives become further entangled, resulting in the unexpected—the clash of histories and the pull of revenge and desire.

    Cristina García’s magnificent orchestration of politics, the intimacies of daily life, and the frailty of human nature unfolds in a moving, ambitious, often comic, and unforgettable tale.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherScribner
    Release dateSep 7, 2010
    ISBN9781439181768
    The Lady Matador's Hotel: A Novel
    Author

    Cristina Garcia

    Cristina García is the author of eight novels including Dreaming in Cuban, The Agüero Sisters, Monkey Hunting, A Handbook to Luck, The Lady Matador’s Hotel, King of Cuba, Here in Berlin, and Vanishing Maps. Her work has been nominated for a National Book Award and translated into fifteen languages. She has taught at universities nationwide and is currently Resident Playwright at Central Works Theater in Berkeley. Visit her website at CristinaGarciaNovelist.com. 

    Read more from Cristina Garcia

    Related to The Lady Matador's Hotel

    Related ebooks

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      Elements Of Mexican Literature

      Nov 13, 2021

      I grew up in Southern California and am from an immigrant family. We moved to the United States when I was 4, so it’s with a certain amount of confusion that I look at the books I was taught were the only acceptable books to read: they were inevitabl

      4 min read

    • Article

      Kendra Allen

      Mar 9, 2021

      Foreskin. A default setting. midnight. Dry eyes. Hesitation at an intersection. Premature adulthood. sheets. Freelancing. Yes maybe. knuckles. Hypervigilance. Corn stubs A sucked-in stomach. Syncing. Infantile embroidery. Showtime. The next step. Pri

      1 min read

    • Article

      In 'Hurricane Season,' Words Swirl Wild And Dark

      Apr 2, 2020

      Fernanda Melchor's poetic, foul-mouthed new novel sits on the border between crime fiction and horror: A woman known as the Witch has been murdered, and her neighbors want to know who did it and why/

      3 min read

    • Article

      Tuesday New Release Day: Starring Manguso, Blake, Lavery, and More

      Feb 8, 2022

      Sarah Blake's latest post-apocalyptic novel, Mellors' satirical debut about a couple's impulsive marriage, and Lavery's speculative memoir are new this week The post Tuesday New Release Day: Starring Manguso, Blake, Lavery, and More appeared first on

      5 min read

    • Article

      Three Mistakes Writers Make in Act I

      Dec 21, 2020

      After the euphoric moment of typing “FADE OUT” on a first draft, your story simmers in a drawer while you take a much-needed break to sort piles of dirty laundry. Now, it’s time to dive back in and explore what story elements work and where your stor

      5 min read

    • Article

      Dreaming Up Her Own Salvation

      Oct 11, 2023

      Dreaming Up Her Own Salvation
      14 min read

    • Article

      Marlon James

      Feb 14, 2022

      Marlon James
      11 min read

    • Article

      For Colored Girls: The 40-year-old Masterwork That’s Still Captivating Audiences

      May 11, 2022

      In the first five minutes of the late artist Ntozake Shange’s masterwork, for colored girls who have considered suicide/ when the rainbow is enuf, a character makes plea of witness and recognition: “somebody/ anybody sing a black girl’s song … bring

      4 min read

    • Article

      Prize Offers Access for African Writers

      Apr 13, 2022

      When attempting to get a foot in the door in the publishing world, the barriers of entry are still high for many writers. It’s not just about the craft side of writing: The potential of your manuscript has a lot to do with who sees it. This step can

      3 min read

    • Article

      Clarice Lispector’s Children’s Story Taught Me to Read Her Like An Adult

      Mar 17, 2017

      Filmmaker Pedro Almodovar was asked to write an introduction to the translated edition of Clarice Lispector’s final novel Breath of Life. Instead of a formal introduction, his refusal letter was published and said this of Lispector’s work: “Each phra

      7 min read

    • Article

      December Preview: The Millions Most Anticipated (This Month)

      Dec 3, 2019

      Here are the new releases we're looking out for December 2019. Let us know what you’re looking forward to in the comments! The post December Preview: The Millions Most Anticipated (This Month) appeared first on The Millions.

      2 min read

    • Article

      Summer’s Most Transporting Books

      Jun 11, 2021

      Get inspired for post-pandemic travel with these recent books set all over the map. Need an escape this summer? Wander the world through the pages of these tales whose setting is often a main character. Whether soaring over Antarctica in Great Circle

      2 min read

    • Article

      New Titles

      Oct 9, 2019

      By George Keithley George Braziller, Inc. “The Donner Party is one of the three or four finest book-length American poems ever written.”—Poetry. “Out of the western migration of the 1840s…Keithley has made a lean, taut narra-tive poem that moves with

      4 min read

    • Article

      Fiction

      Apr 3, 2024

      Fiction
      9 min read

    • Article

      March Preview: The Millions Most Anticipated (This Month)

      Mar 3, 2022

      This month, we've got our eye on new books from the likes of Elaine Hsieh Chou, Sarah Moss, Matt Bell, and Elena Ferrante. The post March Preview: The Millions Most Anticipated (This Month) appeared first on The Millions.

      7 min read

    Reviews for The Lady Matador's Hotel

    4/5

    28 ratings7 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 4/5
      This is a bizarre novel following a handful of characters in a hotel on a Caribbean Island. There is the revolutionary working as a waitress and the military leader she would like to see dead, the Asian businessman who is failing miserably and is consumed by love for a teenage girl, Americans adopting babies from a corrupt female lawyer... and, of course, the lady matador. It has the magical realism one finds in the Latin American tradition, peppered with politics.
    • 3/5
      Just ok. Readable. In fact, a quick read. Just not as good as other related authors
    • 5/5
      I guess the tale has tendency comic work
      I wish to read it well.good ya Garcia.
    • 4/5
      Six people’s lives intersect in surprising and sometimes explosive ways over the course of a week in the Hotel Miraflor, located in the capitol city of an unnamed Central American country. The hotel’s most famous and controversial guest is the strong, unattainable Suki Palacios, a matador in town for a tournament. A woman in a man’s violent world, Suki uses her beauty as a weapon as sharp as her sword. Another strong woman, the lawyer Gertrudis Stuber, uses the hotel as a base for her blackmarket adoption operation. Cuban exile and poet Ricardo and his wife, Gertrudis’s clients, are staying at the hotel while attempting to finalize the details of their adoption. Former guerilla revolutionary Aura works at the hotel as a waitress in the restaurant but begins planning revenge when the Colonel responsible for her brother’s death becomes one of the hotel’s guests. And Won Kim, a moderately successful Korean businessman who is nevertheless miserable, has installed his pregant teenage mistress in a suite of the hotel while plotting a murder-suicide that he knows himself to be too weak to ever accomplish. The internal and external battles of these characters take place against the turbulent political backdrop of the unspecified country. The former dictator of the country is now running in an election and has strong support from one segment of the population even as another commits acts of terrorism against him and his supporters. One by one, other hotels in the country explode, leading up to an explosive conclusion of sorts for the temporary inhabitants of Hotel Miraflor.Vibrant, rich, and detailed, the characters are well-developed and the atmosphere is sultry and immersive. A dash of magical realism enlivens what is otherwise an incisive portrait of modern life in Central America. Highly recommended.

      2 people found this helpful

    • 4/5
      The Lady Matador’s Hotel takes place in an upscale hotel in an unnamed Central American capital. It tells the stories of six individuals whose lives intersect in significant and not so significant ways. The varied characters of the novel include a Mexican-American-Japanese matadora who is competing in a high profile bullfighting competition, a Korean businessman who is under scrutiny for labor rights violations at his factory, a Cuban poet who is in town to adopt a child with his American wife, an ex-guerilla who is a waitress at the hotel, a lawyer who handles international adoptions, and an army colonel who has committed many human rights violations in the country’s recent civil war. It takes place against a backdrop of political turmoil and upcoming controversial elections.

      The book was well written and engaging. It was interesting to see the ways the lives of the characters intersected. Each section of the book focuses on a different character. Sometimes the characters appear in the sections of others, often as nothing more than a passing in the hallway, but as the reader you know what each of them is doing there, despite the fact that they barely notice each other. There wasn’t much of an overarching story to the novel, but the individual stories really kept me interested.
    • 4/5
      Quick and entertaining read!
    • 2/5
      This was not what I was expecting at all. I was expecting a story mostly about a lady matador with a intriguing cast of surrounding characters. What I got is a mere tablespoon of a Mexican Japanese lady matador that likes to have silent sex with strangers with nice feet and a an entire cupfull of unlikeable and/or disturbing characters. The exception being Aura, a former guerrilla fighter now plotting to kill a colonel, a resident in the same hotel. But even she is weird as she believes she is speaking to her dead family at every twist and turn. Also in residence at this charming hotel in a Central American country (I'm pretty darn sure it is El Salvador) is a Korean business man who constantly fantasizes about killing himself, his mistress who is most definitely "not all there," the murderous colonel who likes to pant like a bull in hopes of tantalizing the above mentioned lady matador, a poet and his wife doing an illegal baby adoption, and a lady lawyer who breeds and sells babies out of the country. Basically, there is no one to like but all these people meet or interact to the point their stories kinda merge by the end of the novel.Meanwhile, the country has eleven corrupt politicians battling it out for the presidency and a lot of bitter feelings running high. There are occasional "news updates" between chapters informing reader's of the country's atmostphere. Nice touch. However, the novel overall didn't interest me.

      1 person found this helpful

    Book preview

    The Lady Matador's Hotel - Cristina Garcia

     /abook_preview_excerpt.html\˒u 2g4_@@1$(1CDgU3XKz-^ /9fUw dY!]8Gn|l0cܘMYz|`olbMタt)\]cV1\ Vq̰vwKw[ޙM\/[ք͘<;<׌]g[טs +*ݴ-=RQqrњG.k_yb4+=-+}écʧ>{5Qw{.!x+Ju(y>&`D`eцSB~AD5ɮ};w;h/ ς_ol`VU<^҅uIO3mǼpmur&.ؗ! A tkET!Ƥ QL! (H Cmy`P-,J+%!eyS\O=l+iGGjyU4:}]lxz!bҩy<=aږ؊K@ )ux7C zx]v`'Q X.6fA2_qmKϰG[]o{/&1CG:v PaQE>e05Uv Xhj7b b.فm` R2LӨB@{# 1`gs(0X,MwֿY̎LO9kKgb -$"[RA87BH]M@dGmuL?PmqsNڌhDa) +skt@ X`۠0Kҡ_ + X(B?uQ3G q->`߁+2xOtE 㛉}o} ~i~cWxQ?9DG$`.D].7"S,ζW|Fx~fΕ9z 8Z#.\ xx@]#] d| Λ =ьkA| "*a,CضM=PN|o(A0#2;IjRLO`&+1f(A H5;h ̠F Sdq|LɕH4>IRzM`QhӸzDn8;]#TV}M"{2e\Y UK Ua;zfcmWIAv@pWN(-. fDrHrwNEG!Q gwӂ_ D㹃!GYgAhA;Vp+;H]KU5R=y5a\c~p>a#[av9焕[f!^NivK9B. 38Ŕ ] ;ϭreIrש"cn%tj3QB&K^ tF0KČ[XcBZ.mUXjCɨLhڞmìT>lYupU7W7oL')XGV,Gb|n!keIW=eR3Wn|BO%K0Pl pT2p$ӕEp]=Yo-s>5N_td,̳[>5/TKbmza3%h-RrS ܣfU\aDYSz5F7x٘"l(+Z3u N#g[E ӳ90Ӧ2RwKO[ojw="MlY.Ibаyyr%u9H6Ҙ4#5"1~}ǯUVi1Xex ]G0r> X{D7l7͐'ӭNԛJǵ}CMcPkY3mJ+Ҵ(i>梗 X$LlV žZ*GjҲ(*^ɔc#x>O>˓Oo}{)o.zśkn|٘Hlt#ĚVE畘a:`-䯡[_ae_`qg~ ⳓʯpr|W5|i>tGK? V'"50/O:%6urhI?=fqS5I7=¿#W|VoEzj ~g)K m=Ýw<"{3"f.߳EyjC? ?=L"lTg_8G_l~?2}*JL{ˇs| 57u߳tttq'5JdS= kjR}?$ǪT.ws{3!2)VZONu []z$YTisj, ;1Xiv\/4(/V!.s %ް*Qzi\WDhk.Qp;%`XX<3HD3TX86Տ5qtL@o{kQsF蔌+˨F/SA2-Ӯ oߊ~إҖѝ2ncLPƄ6ad r2X:!'X _J#Lh];l]&U2 PX<[N$r,ج=.83(ժA00v`d)S=SS܊o!-y8 Kb,@k]v0@ r)GR4;ʬf!m.KgS-\(A]@Hn]eRl8ZiUc_d+{'%hSxrl .2!PH'!+)Ӄc.{N) Z 2W^my`w{Ţl}qA_ :vҜb5:h4hݬlYGؖ>qpﰧ1&?jSZCYJ\<2 ('.R3*Lɓ4`cj6Nzs,Ǥ =C҃J(#kfoK&.9)O5KAKzM[oHUijZ!{RYOe H^Sj"s%/I|V]I `;XVl %_PJAGDY|kamiU=xe#cKNQ\QdS).iد 8Qjz@F2M}&Leގd͆UDzHt뇄h.`,+:b4+?Yr嘳4/5S Es؝SLɅ٩:*-cwڱ wI֥TD!仠gyȿ+ȥ,iugs|]hEݵ$ vTrFH#y-Ohp975\Զv&G pΩ+YKUCCЌƚ޴զΙZdszEK%ű&@FB:f3\ws[g wҡAͻ?Ӎ =6e+`P/ixp%<C-v},!ClQZ^I ̡ar)sìwm)Z 6+Ao[l`|PHx5v{@:+H5'yl {@~VO1'J wXUZ\JܞI2R%9!j/MVOdܑ<5ʸ/@'P7)əo`)q0[@z L3f\&"BƢ(UWP?v_hwXJ(TRҳRe6h4-lBrvƶ׊]2E|;}q8',UrBrq`F$\/]ha[ՒwJC*,XL[84)] "!nwu%+N}vu
    Enjoying the preview?
    Page 1 of 1