Hotel Pulp. The book that will punch you straight in the stomach and you will ask for more.

Me reading Hotel Pulp on the flight to Holland.

Hotel Pulp was just another of the thousands of profiles that follow me on my Instagram.

Few comments here and there, always really polite and kind towards me and my job and I decided to give a look to that mysterious profile composed by a random series of sightseeings and few portraits picturing the Italian author Marco Ghilardi with his life companion.

From there I learned about his first book, called Hotel Pulp and being a bookworm myself, he sent me for my birthday, a copy for me to read.

He warned me about the extreme “rawness” of it.

But though I am a big fan of the pulp director Quentin Tarantino, I wasn’t absolutely ready for what I was going to read.

I started the book while waiting for my flight from Milan, Italy to Eindhoven, Holland, and my first thought was “What the hell is this”.

The fourteen short stories, appear as they were hotel rooms. Hotel rooms from some really dirty, surreal and insane hotel, one where you would rather sleep on the sidewalk than sleep in its repugnant beds.

From page one, you will be grabbed by your shirt and slammed into a delirious world, made of stories populated by absurd characters and their insanity (or not?).

And though most of the time you will be finding yourself with a proper disgusted expression for what your eyes are reading, you won’t be able to stop and you will devour the pages while holding your breath.

In this book, everything is possible and though absolutely insane, Marco is able to make it look absolutely normal.

The author asks straight away on the cover if “do you have enough guts to go through this trip?”referring himself to the abominable book you have between your hands.

Well, I do and I am very happy about it.

I am currently on page 81, and the book counts with 192 pages in total, including black and white artworks visually describing the insanity of the stories.

Hotel Pulp is one of those books that you will feel sorry once you will finish it.

For more infos, please visit Marco Ghilardi’s Instagram by clicking here.

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