-
Your next favorite book
is waiting.
Paperback
A seventeen-year-old London girl flies to Los Angeles for the funeral of her mother Mandy, from whom she had been 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 returning love letters and photographs to the men who had known her mother. As she discovers more about Mandy's past and tries to re-enact her life, she comes to question the foundations of her own personality.
"Ignore the chick-lit-ish title. This story works hard to be worldly-wise and cool, and it sometimes succeeds." - Kirkus
"This fictional memoir of loss and redemption, with its sympathetic narrator, will appeal to readers who like their coming-of-age stories on the seedier and melancholy side." - Library Journal
"A sensitively drawn portrait of a troubled young woman, [Stothard's narrator] is convincing…An elegant noirish mystery…This touching, convoluted love-story is shot through with a distinctive talent." - The Independent (UK)
"Matters of personal identity underlie an exhilarating ride through L.A.'s seamier side in the company of a hard-bitten yet highly engaging protagonist." - Daily Mail (UK)
This information about The Pink Hotel was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Anna was born in London. She has written weekly columns in the Observer and the Sunday Telegraph, among other freelance journalism. Her first novel, Isabel and Rocco, was published in 2004. She did her undergraduate degree at Oxford, then moved to Los Angeles where she was awarded a screenwriting scholarship with the Masters program at the American Film Institute. While studying she lived in a surreal mock-German castle in Little Armenia and worked on film sets for two years - script supervising, production design departments - and on finishing her MA she returned to London. She is currently working in London and writing her third novel.
If you liked The Pink Hotel, try these:
by Susanna Kwan
Published 2026
An utterly transporting debut novel about the unexpected relationship between an artist and the 130-year-old woman she cares for—two of the last people living in a flooded San Francisco of the future, the home neither is ready to leave.
by Erika J.. Simpson
Published 2026
From "a writer who's absolutely going places" (Roxane Gay), a remarkable, inventive debut memoir about a mother-daughter relationship across cycles of poverty, separation, and illness, exploring how we forge identity in the face of imminent loss.
by Ashley C.. Ford
Published 2022
One of the most prominent voices of her generation debuts with an extraordinarily powerful memoir: the story of a childhood defined by the looming absence of her incarcerated father.
Theo of Golden by Allen Levi
One spring morning, a stranger arrives in the small southern city of Golden. No one knows where he has come from…or why…
Your guide toexceptional books
BookBrowse seeks out and recommends the best in contemporary fiction and nonfiction—books that not only engage and entertain but also deepen our understanding of ourselves and the world around us.
