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Overview
With "echoes of Of Mice and Men"(The Bookseller, UK), The Motel Life explores the frustrations and failed dreams of two Nevada brothers—on the run after a hit-and-run accident—who, forgotten by society, and short on luck and hope, desperately cling to the edge of modern life.
Synopsis
With "echoes of Of Mice and Men"(The Bookseller, UK), The Motel Life explores the frustrations and failed dreams of two Nevada brothers—on the run after a hit-and-run accident—who, forgotten by society, and short on luck and hope, desperately cling to the edge of modern life.
The New York Times - John Wray
It s a cliché to compare a novel to a story overheard in a bar, but The Motel Life insists on the comparison. Willy Vlautin is the singer and songwriter for Richmond Fontaine, a band based in Portland, Ore., and the music he makes is very much like his writing: mournful, understated and proudly steeped in menthol smoke and bourbon. Slighter than Carver, less puerile than Bukowski, Vlautin nevertheless manages to lay claim to the same bleary-eyed territory, and surprisingly perhaps even unintentionally to make it new.
Editorials
Jonathan Zwickel
"I’m floored…This book feel so damn real, so powerful, so much like life, even if it’s not yours."ASAP -
"Both heartbreaking and inspirational…written…with a simple hypnotic tone that seems as if it was grown in the Reno heat."New York Times Book Review
"Slighter than Carver, less puerile than Bukowski, Vlautin…manages to lay claim to the same blearyeyed territory, and…to make it new."Booklist
"If there’s any justice, anywhere, The Motel Life will be widely read and widely admired."Associated Press ASAP
“Both heartbreaking and inspirational…written…with a simple hypnotic tone that seems as if it was grown in the Reno heat.”San Francisco Weekly
"The furthest Vlautin’s men can move is in circles, shackled to their dysfunctions and their meager paychecks…"Salt Lake City Tribune
"A natural for the bigscreen and in fact Babel and 21 Grams writer Guillermo Arriaga has bought the film rights…"John Wray
It’s a cliché to compare a novel to a story overheard in a bar, but The Motel Life insists on the comparison. Willy Vlautin is the singer and songwriter for Richmond Fontaine, a band based in Portland, Ore., and the music he makes is very much like his writing: mournful, understated and proudly steeped in menthol smoke and bourbon. Slighter than Carver, less puerile than Bukowski, Vlautin nevertheless manages to lay claim to the same bleary-eyed territory, and surprisingly — perhaps even unintentionally — to make it new.— The New York Times
Publishers Weekly
In a gritty debut, Vlautin explores a few weeks in the broken lives of two working-class brothers, Frank and Jerry Lee Flannigan, who abruptly ditch their Reno motel after Jerry Lee drunkenly kills a boy on a bicycle in a hit-and-run. The two are case studies in hard luck: their mother died when they were 14 and 16, respectively; their father is an ex-con deadbeat; neither finished high school. Frank has had just one girlfriend, motel neighbor Annie, whose mother is an abusive prostitute. An innocent simpleton, Jerry Lee is left feeling suicidal after the accident, despite his younger brother's efforts (à la Of Mice and Men's Lenny and George) to console him: "It was real quiet, the way he cried," says Frank, "like he was whimpering." On returning to Reno, an eventual reckoning awaits them. Vlautin's coiled, poetically matter-of-fact prose calls to mind S.E. Hinton—a writer well-acquainted with male misfit protagonists seeking redemption, no matter how destructive. Despite the bleak story and its inevitably tragic ending, Vlautin, who plays in the alt-country band Richmond Fontaine, transmits a quiet sense of resilience and hopefulness. (May)
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