THE LITTLE HOTEL by Christina Stead...

THE LITTLE HOTEL by Christina Stead (Henry Holt: $12.95; 191 pp.) The last novel by the Australian-born author of “The Man Who Loved Children,” “The Little Hotel” is a droll account of the routines and scandals that unfold in a second-rate Swiss pensione during the late ‘40s. Although the comedy is less broad, the marginally competent staff and odd guests of the Hotel Swiss-Touring recall John Cleese’s Fawlty Towers. Like the figures on a tacky souvenir cuckoo clock, Stead’s characters run around in circles, popping in and out of little doors. But money is the pendulum that drives their movements, as the author reveals when she metes out just rewards and punishments in the sly, satisfying conclusion.