Lost Girls and Love Hotels

Posted by Andree Lachapelle Sep 7, 2006

When things get busy in my personal life and work seems overwhelming, like many women in my situation, I dream of getting away.

Vacations are always great and indeed, the appeal of getting lost in a foreign city and hiding out at a luxurious hotel gets increasingly appealing as stress levels reach maximum overload.

Some of us are able to physically hit the road in search of more interesting pastures; for others, the momentary escape must come from books that make us dream, and temporarily remove us from the environment we are trying to escape.

Books are the ultimate in escapism, and women's novels, such as Catherine Hanrahan's "Lost Girls and Love Hotels," are the perfect way to leave our lives behind, ever so briefly.

Hanrahan's "Lost Girls and Love Hotels" is women's fiction at its best.

The story focuses on Margaret, a girl who is trying to forget her own home by escaping to Tokyo - a city bustling with activity night and day. Margaret finds a job working as an English Specialist at a busy flight attendant training school and eventually gets involved in a tortuous affair with a local gangster.

While Tokyo provides Margaret with the perfect escape from her life back home, she soon creates a new life for herself, another world worth escaping and in the end, there is no running away from herself:

"I have realized that no matter what I do, Air-Pro Stewardess Training Institute will never fire me. So, I've been driven to dressing for shock value, like a petulant teenager-strolling into the lobby in ski pants and ballet slippers."

Catherine Hanrahan's prose is engaging, and the book draws you in from the start; the images created in "Lost Girls and Love Hotels" are haunting, perfect depictions of a life foreign to all protagonists.

"Lost Girls and Love Hotels" is the perfect way to escape from your life, if all you have is ten or fifteen minutes a day.

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