The White Octopus Hotel
A mysterious hotel in the Swiss Alps stars in this time-traveling fantasy novel. In 2015, Eve Shaw is a London art appraiser – friendless and reclusive, burdened by past regrets. She wears a tattoo on her hip of a white octopus; oddly, it moves around her body at will. An elderly man, Max Everly, interrupts her day at the auction house. It can’t be the famous Max Everly, her favorite composer born 116 years ago. But something familiar passes between them… and he knows her name. Max has come to gift her a sculpture of a white octopus – exactly like her self-designed tattoo. As he leaves, he collapses and dies with the final words, “Promise you’ll come back to the hotel.”
It is the discovery of an old tea set stamped with a white octopus and a room key with a crest identical to her tattoo that leads Eve to Switzerland and the White Octopus Hotel, abandoned and in ruins. Her journey through time begins when she turns that key to Room 27. This is also Max Everly’s story beginning in 1917 as a soldier fighting in the trenches of France. He is sent to recover at the repurposed White Octopus, returning to visit in 1935.
As the narrative moves from 2016 to 1935, 1917, and 1897, time folds in on itself. The author enchants us with the hotel’s luxurious surroundings and its magical objects – clocks that can rewind time, a telephone to call the dead, reading glasses to see what you need to see, writing paper to write to a younger you, and magical music boxes. There is a ghost horse, an enigmatic rabbit, a mysterious missing artist, and best of all, a beautiful love story. A thoroughly charming and delightful read that inspired me to return to page one and read over again.
