Longlisted for the Orange Fiction Prize 2012

A seventeen-year-old London girl flies to Los Angeles for the funeral of her mother Lily, from whom she was separated in her childhood. After stealing a suitcase of letters, clothes and photographs from her mum’s bedroom at the top of a hotel on Venice Beach, the girl spends her summer travelling around Los Angeles in a bid to track down the men who knew her mother. As she discovers more about Lily’s past and tries to re-enact her life, she comes to question the foundations of her own personality.

The Pink Hotel, Anna Stothard’s stunning second novel after the critical and commercial success of Isabel and Rocco, is a tale about finding love in the most unlikely of places, and how sometimes you can only know who you are by discovering who you are not.

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'A beautiful story.' Anna Paquin

'I am always drawn to stories with strong and complex female protagonists. And I always knew the first movie I would want to direct would contain the role I would have killed to play when I was a teenager. This book moved and provoked me in ways I can't fully articulate. I am incredibly excited to transform Anna Stothard's extraordinary work into a film I hope we will both be proud of.' Anna Paquin

'The Pink Hotel is mysterious, lyrical, and utterly absorbing, by turns funny and forlorn. Anna Stothard is a precise, insightful observer of what it means to be human, and her writing bristles with sexiness and suspense, love, loss, and longing. This is the best book I've read in years.' Davy Rothbart, author of My Heart is an Idiot

'The quality of her writing is remarkable.' Helen Dunmore

'She breathes new life into old literature.' Fay Weldon

'Astonishingly good... Stothard’s writing is accomplished and very engaging.' The Times

'A poignant novel about identity, and a love/hate letter to LA.' Glamour Magazine

'Matters of personal identity underlie an exhilarating ride through LA’s seamier side in the company of a hard-bitten yet highly engaging protagonist.' The Daily Mail

'A gently transgressive, transatlantic quest that conjures up both the languid heat of LA and the confusions of a young woman on the cusp.' The Lady

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You can also buy an e-book of The Pink Hotel (ISBN 9781846881718) from Amazon and Waterstone's


Interview with Anna Stothard

Read an excerpt from The Pink Hotel

Follow author Anna Stothard on twitter @AnnaStothard and on her blog www.annastothard.com

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