THE GRAND HOTEL BY GREGORY DAY, RANDOM HOUSE, $32.95.
The Grand Hotel is the kind of place – and book – which answers our need for the things that can be lacking in our lives: community, eccentricity, fun, freedom, history and magic. Like many Australian towns, Mangowak is under siege by officiousness, regulations and political correctness.
Then the council goes one step too far and decides to knock down the town’s only pub to build eco-apartments. And so begins artist Noel Lea’s life as a publican, as his home – a cross between a pub and a work of art where the urinals play quirky recordings – is built on the site of the town’s original Grand Hotel.
The true story of the hotel and the mysterious fire that destroyed it 120 years ago gradually unfold.
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