Maid is a delightful little who-dun-it novel by Nita Prose, which was gifted to me by my mom for Christmas this past year.
It certainly fit the bill for a novel that I would normally not give a second look at, given there’s not a single apocalypse, zombie, spaceship or alternate dimension in sight. Instead, it’s a week in the life of Molly the Maid, who proudly and happily toils away at the Regency Grand Hotel. She’s a women to loves cleaning and returning her allocated rooms to a “state of perfection”. She’s clearly a character on the spectrum, but what precise diagnosis is never revealed. What do know is that she struggles with social contact, understanding facial expressions, and is misunderstood and ridiculed by her co-workers. The guests in the hotel largely ignore her, and her life is very small – she works, she goes home to an empty apartment and misses her deceased grandmother intensely.
Despite her social exclusion, she has formed a few tenuous links to those around her. First, she has a crush on the barman in the hotel, and risks her job daily to help his ‘friend’ Juan, the restaurant dishwasher, to squat in a vacant hotel room each night. Second, she has Giselle Black, the wealthy young wife of a regular hotel guest. Giselle and Molly speak at length about Giselle’s miserable marriage to the billionaire Mr Black and tips generously. Finally, the paternal hotel doorman, who also knew her grandmother, takes a keen interest in her wellbeing and does his best to watch out for her.
Molly’s regimented life is upturned when, while completing her cleaning and returning rooms to a state of perfection, she comes across the corpse of Mr Black in bed. What follows from here is a fable in the dangers of living in naivety and believing in the good of others. Molly’s life is upturned as she becomes central to the investigation into his death, and her peculiar mannerisms are twisted and used against her.
Thought this was far from my usual fare, I thoroughly enjoyed spending a few days with Molly. Though the journey the novel takes was predictable, it was not unpleasant. Overall, I’d give this 3 hastily pawned wedding rings out of 5.
