Cape Times E-dition

A fictionalised account of mental illness effects

THE SWANK HOTEL Lucy Corin Loot.co.za (R332) GRAYWOLF REVIEWER: | THE WASHINGTON POST

THE moving and discursive experimental novel from Lucy Corin, The Swank Hotel, tells the story of a young woman named Em whose dull, stable life cannot withstand her anxiety about her sister Ad's schizophrenia-induced peregrinations.

The Swank Hotel takes its title from the fairly luxurious Midwestern hotel where Ad is discovered in distress. Em drives by the establishment and remembers that her sister had once called it “swank.” The word takes deep root in Em's consciousness. What do we mean when we say “swank”? she seems to be asking, at various points in the book. Since the novel takes place just after the 2008 financial crisis, “swank” seems to stand for a sense of ease that has disappeared for many.

Em and her parents, a busy mother and a badly depressed father, wish for relief from their despair over Ad's mental illness.

“The usual suspense returned: When would Adeline's condition and whereabouts become known, would efforts to locate her bear fruit, would messages left yield a reply, somebody finally thinking up something useful.” It's a feeling with which Corin may be familiar – the events in the book are drawn from her real-life experiences with her own sister.

Part of Corin's style involves bringing in unexpected narrative threads: While Ad recovers, Em has a strange, hostile yet intimate situation with her boss Frank and his longtime lover Jack.

Corin also follows her characters through personal obsessions. Ad's father coaxes her out of a coma with an incredibly long string of dead-baby jokes, and tent villages occupied by “the newly houseless” play a role in Em's life.

Telling a family story is always difficult, but telling a sibling story might be even more challenging because siblings supposedly exist on the same level of power within modern families.

If a deeply troubled sister affects another sister, who gets to tell the story?

This past summer, Corin's brother-in-law, a Berlin-based artist named Sebastian Meissner, published a letter on Medium deriding Corin's fictionalised take on her sister Emily Hochman's illness. Meissner claims that the book “breaches several ethical boundaries” and calls Corin out for “appropriation” of her sister's story. He states, “When writing a book such as The Swank Hotel it is of critical importance to work with the protagonists in tandem, on equal footing, and allow such individuals to represent themselves in a way that is comfortable and safe.”

The Swank Hotel suggests that siblings, who rarely share equal footing in life, certainly do not have to in art. Corin, whose previous novels have been well reviewed, has chosen to write fiction, not memoir. All else is a matter between sisters.

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2021-10-22T07:00:00.0000000Z

2021-10-22T07:00:00.0000000Z

https://capetimes.pressreader.com/article/281672553143746

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