The Lady Matador's Hotel
by Cristina Garcia
2010
I first noticed The Lady Matador's Hotel in grad school at the college bookstore because of its eye-catching cover, and I've kind of been meaning to read it ever since. One of the things I've been doing this year is trying to finally get around to reading things that've been on my list for forever. I'd long since forgotten whatever it was that drew me to the book, just a vague sense there was something there that intrigued me. I feel fortunate, because it's a much better than I had any reason to expect.
The Lady Matador's Hotel is quite structured, which immediately endears it to me. The book follows six main characters over the course of six days, from Sunday to Friday, plus an epilogue. The action is mostly contained in the Hotel Miraflor. Each chapter gives us one scene with each character over the course of one day, and each scene is labeled by the location it takes place, like the elevator, the patio restaurant, the lobby, the roof, specific rooms. The characters do have names, but Garcia usually refers to them by their occupation - the lawyer, the colonel, the waitress, the poet, the factory owner, and of course, the lady matador. The last section of each chapter is excerpts from the day's tv and radio news.
The characters pass each other by and occasionally intersect; the plot is like one of those movies with an ensemble cast where everyone's following their own storyline, the sort that were popular around the time Garcia wrote this. Because it takes place in a Spanish-speaking country (in this case, an unnamed Central American nation) and involves bullfighting, it reminds me of one of the first movies like that I ever saw, Carnages. I learned that in the intervening years, the book has been made into a play. On the one hand this makes sense, as Garcia has an eye for pairing dramatic moments and scenic locales; but on the other hand, an awful lot of what happens takes place inside the characters' heads, and the what action there is gains its meaning from those interior thoughts.
The book's cover depicts the very first scene, the lady matador admiring herself in the mirror before dressing in her costume. She's in town for a competition between matadoras, and to fight a few exhibition matches before the big event. She provides a throughline to the book. She's in the first scene and the last, in the news each day, and each of the other characters notices her and thinks about her, the celebrity in their midst. The lady matador thinks about her dead mother, contemplates her eventual retirement, psyches herself up with casual sex, preens around the hotel, and performs for an adoring press. We get to see a couple of her bullfights close-up.
The colonel is at Hotel Miraflor for a pan-Latin American military conference. He's a brutal man, a killer, a war criminal. The waitress is an ex-guerilla, a former leftist militant who thought she'd retired from conflict, until the man who killed her whole family, who drove her to revolution in the first place, shows up as a guest. The waitress spends the week trying to decide whether or not to assassinate the colonel, and being visited by the ghost of her brother. On the news, we see bombings nearby as other rebels attack the conference-goers at neighboring hotels.
The lawyer sells the infant children of local mothers to adoptive American parents. She calls the mothers she employs her 'breeders.' The national legislature is on the brink of passing a law banning international adoptions, but she's sure her political connections and her bribe money can keep her in business. The poet and his wife are here to adopt a baby. The poet is a Cuban exile, his wife an American, and being here is dredging up old feelings and new uncertainties.
The factory owner is a sadsack from Korean. He's depressed and suicidal. He feels endlessly sorry for himself. He's been losing money, his workers are striking, the press accuses him of underpaying and abusing his workers. His 16 year-old indigenous girlfriend is about to give birth, and she persuaded him to book them the honeymoon suite, which he can't afford, but he plans to be dead by the end of the week anyway. He doesn't seem to know or care what will happen to her if she's alone.
Several of these characters are unpleasant people, who have done and are still doing immoral things. The country is troubled, an ex-dictator is favored to win an upcoming presidential election, and America is implicated in many of the troubles - it's Americans who come to the hotel to buy babies, CIA agents attend the military conference. Garcia sets the characters in motion and closely observes their inner lives. Her writing is psychologically realistic, without overt moral judgment. Even as the world just off-camera is filled with big dramatic events - an election, a hurricane, a fatal nightclub fire, terrorist bombings - the characters themselves remain grounded in both their immediate concerns and their introspection about past regrets and future decisions.
The characters pass each other by and occasionally intersect; the plot is like one of those movies with an ensemble cast where everyone's following their own storyline, the sort that were popular around the time Garcia wrote this. Because it takes place in a Spanish-speaking country (in this case, an unnamed Central American nation) and involves bullfighting, it reminds me of one of the first movies like that I ever saw, Carnages. I learned that in the intervening years, the book has been made into a play. On the one hand this makes sense, as Garcia has an eye for pairing dramatic moments and scenic locales; but on the other hand, an awful lot of what happens takes place inside the characters' heads, and the what action there is gains its meaning from those interior thoughts.
The book's cover depicts the very first scene, the lady matador admiring herself in the mirror before dressing in her costume. She's in town for a competition between matadoras, and to fight a few exhibition matches before the big event. She provides a throughline to the book. She's in the first scene and the last, in the news each day, and each of the other characters notices her and thinks about her, the celebrity in their midst. The lady matador thinks about her dead mother, contemplates her eventual retirement, psyches herself up with casual sex, preens around the hotel, and performs for an adoring press. We get to see a couple of her bullfights close-up.
The colonel is at Hotel Miraflor for a pan-Latin American military conference. He's a brutal man, a killer, a war criminal. The waitress is an ex-guerilla, a former leftist militant who thought she'd retired from conflict, until the man who killed her whole family, who drove her to revolution in the first place, shows up as a guest. The waitress spends the week trying to decide whether or not to assassinate the colonel, and being visited by the ghost of her brother. On the news, we see bombings nearby as other rebels attack the conference-goers at neighboring hotels.
The lawyer sells the infant children of local mothers to adoptive American parents. She calls the mothers she employs her 'breeders.' The national legislature is on the brink of passing a law banning international adoptions, but she's sure her political connections and her bribe money can keep her in business. The poet and his wife are here to adopt a baby. The poet is a Cuban exile, his wife an American, and being here is dredging up old feelings and new uncertainties.
The factory owner is a sadsack from Korean. He's depressed and suicidal. He feels endlessly sorry for himself. He's been losing money, his workers are striking, the press accuses him of underpaying and abusing his workers. His 16 year-old indigenous girlfriend is about to give birth, and she persuaded him to book them the honeymoon suite, which he can't afford, but he plans to be dead by the end of the week anyway. He doesn't seem to know or care what will happen to her if she's alone.
Several of these characters are unpleasant people, who have done and are still doing immoral things. The country is troubled, an ex-dictator is favored to win an upcoming presidential election, and America is implicated in many of the troubles - it's Americans who come to the hotel to buy babies, CIA agents attend the military conference. Garcia sets the characters in motion and closely observes their inner lives. Her writing is psychologically realistic, without overt moral judgment. Even as the world just off-camera is filled with big dramatic events - an election, a hurricane, a fatal nightclub fire, terrorist bombings - the characters themselves remain grounded in both their immediate concerns and their introspection about past regrets and future decisions.
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