A story about the bittersweet, often absurd, quality of modern single life follows the travails of Colleen Sweeney as she confides in the other residents of her apartment complex--The Lord's Motel. A first novel.
| ||||||||||||||||||
Book Description
Editorial Reviews
From Publishers Weekly
A perfect example of the novel as soap bubble, this slight, lightly ironic first effort absorbs the reader but leaves little of substance behind. Told in the first person, it is the story of Colleen Sweeney, a 30-something "codependent" product of an alcoholic father and a battered mother. Having escaped to Houston, Colleen runs the Service-to-the-Unserved van for her local library, and lives in an apartment building called the Lord's Motel, complete with a crazed-but-empathetic New Age superintendent and three female neighbors. She has been looking for love in all the wrong places--specifically, with a psychologically abusive cruise ship director--but her chance for redemption is imminent. The narrative flies from subject to subject and setting to setting (prisons, houses of prostitution, emergency rooms), alighting so briefly that the potential of some weighty social issues is never developed. This is not a bad technique--too much attention to any one subject might have made the book maudlin. Moving though the fiction often is, however, the author's light touch finally saps her words of an ability to leave an imprint. The bubble of her work, which reflects truths of love, sex and family, eventually bursts, leaving an impression of evanescence. 10,000 first printing; author tour.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Library Journal
The Lord's Motel is a hilarious and poignant first novel about love, the singles scene, and the absurdities of modern life. Colleen Sweeney, a librarian in Houston specializing in service to the unserved, is in love with Mr. Wrong--Web Desiderio--a playboy and social director on a cruise ship. Web leads Colleen into an arrest for prostitution. Then, when one of her homebound patrons is rushed to the emergency room, Colleen meets Mr. Right--Dr. Gabriel Benedict--who is horrified by her past. Throughout her adventures, Colleen is supported by her friends from the Lord's Motel, the unusual apartment building in which she lives. A lively and eccentric cast of characters, an offbeat plot, and a spunky heroine make for light and enjoyable reading. Recommended.
- Stephanie Furtsch, New Rochelle P.L., N.Y.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.
- Stephanie Furtsch, New Rochelle P.L., N.Y.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Product Details
Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
|
More About the Author
Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.
Customer Reviews
|
Share your thoughts with other customers:
|
||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Flighty story with a flighty heroine,
By
This review is from: The Lord's Motel: A Novel (Paperback)
I liked the other reviews of this book, and it's generally hard to disagree with them. However, the character of Web Desiderio was less than fully developed, and it makes the narrator's conflict less believable. Colleen's main conflict is that she is kept "off-balance" by her mixed feelings for Web. She's drawn to him, but he hurts her and makes her feel worthless. It's clear why he's a toxic person for her, but what is the reason for her attraction? She mentions his physical attractiveness, but only in passing, as if that's not that important to her. There is a scene where he discusses his dead mother, and it seems that Colleen feels for him, but it fails to render him adorable. When about to make a critical error in judgement, Colleen simply defends the enormous mistake by saying it's to "have the experience." I feel like her mind conveniently shut down, and it did not feel like the author had built up Web's powers of persuasion effectively. Further more, Colleen's relationship with the doctor develops unrealistically quickly and feels a bit false. On the whole, the book is enjoyable, and at times Colleen is remarkably insightful. Also, I chose this book because I may have to relocate to Houston. The author's depiction of Houston is very helpful.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
There but for the Grace of God...,
By Robert B. Liddell (Houston, Texas) - See all my reviews
This review is from: The Lord's Motel: A Novel (Paperback)
Gail Donohue Storey's The Lord's Motel deals with the scattered life of Colleen Sweeney, and her struggle to retain sanity in the face of an aimlessness and co-dependency that has left her perilously close to emotional disaster.Colleen works in a library, and demonstrates enough initiative to create a prison book delivery program, despite substantial administrative resistance. She calls it Service to the Unserved. But not everything about Colleen's life is so well orchestrated. Personally, she is far from together. She is right at home in her small, somewhat seedy apartment complex with its collection of tenants in varying degrees of mental stability. These neighbors (including a New Age pseudo-prophet named St. Francis, who manages the place) are Colleen's surrogate family, and they provide a number of wise and comic moments in the book. Colleen also has an unhealthy attachment to a man of questionable character, whose manipulation and sexual deviance she would rather endure than risk the terror of being alone. Everything about Colleen suggests both kindness and desperation. She is at once playful and panicked. Storey's use of first person narration is appropriate to her character's impulsiveness and unwitting flirtation with the darker side of life. We see events unfold as Colleen does, but with greater perspective (Ever noticed it's always easier to spot the horrors in someone else's life?). Dialogue and imagery are both fresh. The tone of the book is light, but to dismiss it as quirk is to miss the point entirely. There are serious issues at work. Colleen's cute-speak is a happy mask, designed to disguise despair. One gets the sense that if for one second Colleen stopped smiling, her face would crack like poorly treated porcelain. Perhaps Service to the Unserved is a metaphor for Colleen's precarious plight, and by extension the rest of us. I liked Colleen. I found her to be in most ways normal, which is frightening. But maybe the real fright is that so many of us are, at some point in our lives, a single thread away from losing it. On the other hand, maybe we're all just walking around in need of a little Service. Reading The Lord's Motel might do the trick.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A Consistently Smart, Witty Story by an Exceptional Writer,
By
This review is from: The Lord's Motel: A Novel (Paperback)
"Is it better to have fun with a kinky man or to be gloomy with a good one?" So begins Gail Donohue Storey's smart, witty and sometimes sensual tale of one woman's search for love and personal growth. The story is narrated by the engaging and endearing Colleen, the principal protagonist, who functions in a chronic state of analytical overload. Indeed, her search for answers is continually impeded by her propensity to keep manufacturing more questions. Colleen is a librarian; bright, thoughtful, and kind. But her self-created world of palpable excess and her personal baggage take their toll in her decision-making processes. The result is a story that grabs the reader from the first sentence and never lets him or her go. The characters are brilliantly created and unforgettable. Perhaps most compelling, though, is Storey's gift for turning a clever phrase in describing Colleen's existential angst. It makes the dialogue some of the most entertaining that I have ever seen in a novel. Casual readers will love the story; voracious ones will marvel at the artfulness of the text; and writers, such as I, will just wish that they could write like Gail Donohue Storey. This book is a winner. It's "Sex in the City" with an actual point.
Share your thoughts with other customers: Create your own review
|
|
Tag this product(What's this?)Think of a tag as a keyword or label you consider is strongly related to this product.
Tags will help all customers organize and find favorite items. |
Sell a Digital Version of This Book in the Kindle Store
If you are a publisher or author and hold the digital rights to a book, you can sell a digital version of it in our Kindle Store.
Learn more
