Grand Hotel Europa

June 6, 2022
Pfeijffer’s expansive if imperfect latest (after La Superba) reckons with Europe’s reliance on and fascination with its past. The narrator, also named Ilja, arrives at the Grand Hotel Europa somewhere in Europe to reflect on his lost relationship with Clio, an Italian art historian he lived with in Venice. He meets the bellboy Abdul, a refugee who relates his harrowing journey across the Mediterranean; the majordomo Signor Montebello, whose dedication becomes dispensable under new Chinese ownership; and Patelski, an “eminent scholar” who pontificates on European identity, the 2015 refugee crisis, and other lofty themes. In flashback, Ilja and Clio meet in Genoa, then move to Venice after she gets a job with the Galleria delle Belle Arti. There, Ilja starts to document his impressions of tourists, and they hunt for a lost late Caravaggio painting. Travels to the Netherlands and Montenegro inform Ilja’s trenchant observations on the destabilizing effects of modern tourism, but his egotism and infantilization of Clio erode their relationship. Sophomoric, smutty characterizations of Ilja’s sex life and an occasional reliance on stereotypes—a man referred to as the “big Greek,” an ethereal feminist French poet—clash with the otherwise vital commentary. There’s real power here, but it’s diluted by the distracting detours.