![\"Hotel](\"https:\/\/secondbysecondworldwar.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/04\/WHotelBoy-192x300.jpg\")
<\/a>Hotel Boy —– by John Trythall(Austin Macauley Publishers, 2013) [Photograph by Edith-Mary Smith]<\/p><\/div>The novel Hotel Boy<\/em> by John Trythall (Austin Macauley Publishers, 2013) takes the reader through the early years of the Second World War from the viewpoint of ten-or-so-year-old Michael Treloar. In that sense, Hotel Boy<\/em> can be compared to John Boorman\u2019s Hope and Glory<\/em>, which is another account of wartime boyhood (although a film, not a novel).<\/p>\n Hotel Boy<\/em> introduces an interesting and unusual perspective in that the setting is a hotel<\/em> (smallish, almost a boarding house) in the English seaside town of Forbury. Michael\u2019s father was killed in 1940 while serving in France with the British Expeditionary Force. Michael and his mum are uprooted from their home and transplanted to Roselea<\/em>, where Michael is dismayed to learn that he is not to have a bedroom of his own. His sleeping quarters will be in the hotel\u2019s hairdressing salon, run by the hotelkeeper\u2019s daughter, Lorna. (Why is it that fictional boy heroes so often find themselves lacking a bedroom? Harry Potter slept in a closet beneath the stairs!)<\/p>\n Trythall cleverly keeps pace with wartime goings-on through quotes from Churchill\u2019s speeches. My favorite, given at the beginning of Chapter 10, is from Churchill\u2019s 1941 speech to the boys of his old school: \u201cThese are not dark days; these are great days\u2014the greatest days our country has ever lived<\/em>;\u201d<\/p>\n The experience of the times is evoked in many small details. A radio really was called a wireless<\/em>, and there was a warming-up period between turning (switching) on the radio and being able to hear any sound; the valves (vacuum tubes<\/em> to Canadians and Americans) needed time to heat up and become active. Unless you kept chickens of your own, egg powder<\/em> would be your wartime substitute for actual eggs. Coupons were needed to buy clothes, or to buy almost anything at all: meat, poultry, sugar, coal, . . . The list was long.<\/p>\n Tidbits mentioned in the book include listening to radio broadcasts from Germany by Lord Haw-Haw<\/em>, the British traitor whose \u2018la-di-dah\u2019 accent so amused the British public. A less well known tidbit is the bombing raid by Vichy French aircraft against Gibraltar\u2014retaliation for the Royal Navy\u2019s attack on the French naval base at Oran.<\/p>\n The author never lets us forget that Michael is a boy and is doing boy\u2019s stuff<\/em>. This includes reading the \u2018Just William<\/em>\u2019 books. These were written by female author Richmal Crompton and might be considered the Harry Potter<\/em> books of the time. She wrote over forty of them, beginning in the nineteen twenties and ending in the early seventies. Just William<\/em> is the title of the first book. Michael, our boy hero in Hotel Boy<\/em>, sees the resourceful, up-for-anything William as his role model and tries to live life accordingly.<\/p>\n His life, of course, is impacted by those around him. The central theme of Hotel Boy<\/em> revolves around the microcosm of society represented by the people of Roselea<\/em>: guests arriving for the weekend, guests who stay year round, the owner and his wife, their daughter, the RAF pilots who are regular customers at the hotel bar, their girlfriends, the RAF Wing Commander who is the love interest of Michael\u2019s mother and, of course, Michael and his mother, themselves, whose relocation from the city gives them a status akin to being refugees. Toss in violent death, youthful sex, jealousy, and unwanted pregnancy, and one has an entertaining piece of fiction that closely mirrors life.<\/p>\n All in all, if you were fortunate to have lived during \u201cthe greatest days our country has ever lived<\/em>,\u201d or if your parents or grandparents lived through those times, or if you are simply curious, you will find Hotel Boy<\/em> by John Trythall both enjoyable and informative.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The novel Hotel Boy by John Trythall (Austin Macauley Publishers, 2013) takes the reader through the early years of the Second World War from the viewpoint of ten-or-so-year-old Michael Treloar. In that sense, Hotel Boy can be compared to John … Continue reading