Hotel: Object Lessons

Bloomsbury presents Hotel by Joanna Walsh, read by Stephanie Racine.

Object Lessons is a series of short books about the hidden lives of ordinary things.

During the breakdown of an unhappy marriage, writer Joanna Walsh got a job as a hotel reviewer, and began to gravitate towards places designed as alternatives to home. Luxury, sex, power, anonymity, privacy…hotels are where our desires go on holiday, but also places where our desires are shaped by the hard realities of the marketplace. Part memoir and part meditation, this book visits a series of rooms, suites, hallways, and lobbies—the spaces and things that make up these modern sites of gathering and alienation, hotels.

Object Lessons is published in partnership with an essay series in The Atlantic.

© 2025 Bloomsbury Academic (Audiobook): 9798765153352

Release date

Audiobook: 29 May 2025