Hôtel Splendid sits on the edge of a desolate swamp in an unnamed country. A woman runs the hotel, which is patronized only by the most desperate travelers or workers, batting ancient plumbing, pest infestations, and a crumbling ceiling. On top of all her unending tasks, she waits on her two sisters--one bored, one infirm--as the hotel sinks slowly into the swamp. In Forever Valley, an orphan comes of age and goes from being housed in a rectory, where she reads to the aging minister, to the dance hall across the street where she immediately begins sex work. By day, she begins a personal project to exhume the grounds of the rectory in search of her loved ones. In Rose Mellie Rose, a baby is found by Rose, who raises her in a souvenir shop. At the age of twelve and already a young woman, Mellie moves to the spectral town of Oât, where she makes a photographic and written record of her life and of a dying language. In all three novels, Redonnet has said, "it is the women who fight, who seek, who create."

A fever dream of looping, repeating obsessions, a world where time alternately contracts and leaps, and decay and disintegration are inevitable and unstoppable, and a strange, disquieting gem of laconic humour and crushed dreams, Marie Redonnet's Hôtel Splendid Trilogy is a modern classic: as brutal and unforgettable as a Brothers Grimm tale.