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The Motel Life: A Novel by [Willy Vlautin]

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Willy Vlautin

The Motel Life: A Novel Kindle Edition

by Willy Vlautin (Author) Format: Kindle Edition

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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.

Print length

228 pages
Language

English
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On Kindle Scribe
Publisher

Harper Perennial
Publication date

September 27, 2011
File size

7137 KB
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Editorial Reviews

From 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)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition.

From Booklist

Author Vlautin, a member of the critically acclaimed alt-country band Richmond Fontaine, has crafted a beautifully artless first novel. It tells the story of Frank and Jerry Lee Flannigan, who are on the run because of a hit-run-and-run accident in which Jerry Lee was involved. Eschewing compound sentences and even similes, Vlautin illuminates the lives of two decent young men from Reno who have been dealt a very bad hand; their mother died when they were teens, and their father, a thief and an inveterate gambler, left years before. They live in down-at-the-heels motels, drink too much, and work at dead-end jobs. Jerry Lee is a self-described "loser"--but with a conscience. He fails at suicide occasioned by grief, but Frank is there, inventing naive stories to keep him going. It's as ineffably sad as a lyric by Willie Nelson, but it's also a richly compassionate and sweetly sad meditation on what Billy Clyde Puckett in Dan Jenkins' Semi-Tough (1972) called "life itsownself." If there's any justice, anywhere, The Motel Life will be widely read and widely admired. Thomas Gaughan
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition.

Product details

ASIN ‏ : ‎ B005HF54M2
Publisher ‏ : ‎ Harper Perennial; 1st edition (September 27, 2011)
Publication date ‏ : ‎ September 27, 2011
Language ‏ : ‎ English
File size ‏ : ‎ 7137 KB
Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Sticky notes ‏ : ‎ On Kindle Scribe
Print length ‏ : ‎ 228 pages

Best Sellers Rank: #910,806 in Kindle Store (See Top 100 in Kindle Store)
- #1,274 in Contemporary American Fiction
- #2,697 in Education & Reference (Kindle Store)
- #3,884 in Mystery, Thriller & Suspense Literary Fiction

Customer Reviews:
240 ratings

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Willy Vlautin

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Willy Vlautin has published five novels, THE MOTEL LIFE, NORTHLINE, LEAN ON PETE, THE FREE, and DON’T SKIP OUT ON ME. THE MOTEL LIFE was turned into a major motion picture starring Kris Kristofferson and Emile Hirsh in 2012. The movie version of LEAN ON PETE will be released this spring starring Charlie Plummer and Steve Buscemi. Vlautin lives outside of Portland, Oregon and is the founding member of the bands Richmond Fontaine and The Delines.

Customer reviews

4.4 out of 5

240 global ratings

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4 star		31%
3 star		8%
2 star		3%
1 star		1%

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Top reviews from the United States

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donna benn

excellent read!

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on September 18, 2022

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I could not put this book down. It was raw and so human, humble and sad.
Well done!
Donna Dallas

Helpful

BECAUSE HOPE, IT'S BETTER THAN HAVING NOTHING AT ALL

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on April 10, 2016

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MOTEL LIFE

Willy Vlautin can write. And write. And win awards. And write. And grab you by your heart and soul and suck you into his books so well that you become a part of them. He can write and bring you to tears. He is full of compassion, emotion, takes characters who are so downtrodden there is no way up for them -- yet, yet, he brings so much hope into his writing. I LOVE Vlautin.

We meet the Flannigan brothers, Frank and Jerry Lee. They are two young men who are down on their luck, can't hold jobs, love to drink, and have a talent for attracting trouble. If it weren't for bad luck they would have no luck at all. They are basically good people who just can't catch a break.

On the back cover we read -- "I knew then, that morning, when I saw the kid's frozen arms in the back of the car that bad luck had found my brother and me. And us, we took the bad luck and strapped it around our feet like concrete. We did the worst imaginable thing you could do. We ran away."

Thus begins the biggest little adventure you will read. Brothers Jerry Lee and Frank run from their problems/troubles and fall in to even more complex problems. Vlautin takes you along for the ride; meeting down to earth characters you will remember for a long time, helping others even though they themselves need help, and giving readers a front seat tour of Reno.

The story is simple and the reading is divine. Vlautin really knows how to get inside his characters heads and makes you feel as if you know them also. The story line is fast paced and full of surprises along the way. The events that take place are believable and entertaining. I just read the last word of this book and am missing Frank and Jerry Lee already; they have been a big part of my life for the past few days.

This is a book I will recommend to all and remember forever. Vlautin is like that -- he makes you remember what he has written. I have also read LEAN ON PETE, THE FREE, and now MOTEL LIFE. I only have NORTHLINE left to read. I am praying Vlautin releases a new book soon.

At the end of this book is a section about the author, a section called A TOUR OF THE FLANNIGAN BROTHERS' RENO, and a nice write up regarding the illustrator, Nate Beaty. Willy Vlautin is also a song writer and a major member of the band RICHMOND FONTAINE. There are song lyrics included also.

I have to say that Willy Vlautin is easily one of my favorite authors and I recommend his work to all. His writing is passionate, hard, kind, rough, wonderful, and sad. Roll all of that together and you are going to agree -- he is one of the best around.

5 people found this helpful

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Chris

Ok story about a couple of sad lives

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on August 21, 2022

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The writing is good, characters are easy to like, but darn what a sad story. Not sure why people like to write sad novels about people with crappy lives and then write the saddest of endings. That's what The Motel Life is.

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on August 26, 2017

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As I was reading The Motel Life, Willy Vlautin’s debut novel, a memorable two-word phrase from a Hunter S. Thompson work crawled into my head and wouldn’t leave.

“Beery tedium.”

Thompson was describing the dreary day-to-day lives of chronically unemployed outlaw bikers in his 1966 book, Hell’s Angels: The Strange and Terrible Saga of the Outlaw Motorcycle Gangs, living in and around Oakland, California. Vlautin’s novel chronicles the dreary day-to-day lives of two brothers, Frank and Jerry Lee Flannigan, living in and around Reno, Nevada.

Frank and Jerry Lee careen from one mis-adventure to another, living moment-to-moment, day-labor job to day-labor job, in an unsure world where financial planning means that you have accumulated enough spare change for the next six-pack. One third of the way through The Motel Life, one Flannigan brother is thrust into the multiple role of personal attendant, suicide prevention counselor and surprisingly gifted story teller, surprising because their day to day conversations usually sound something like this:

“It was the middle of the night when I woke next.
‘Are you awake?’
‘Yeah, he said.
‘How you feeling?’ I asked him.
‘I’m having nightmares,’ he said softly and we fell quiet for a time and then I got up and went to the cooler and took a beer from it and opened it.
‘You mind if I have one? It sounds good. Nothing has been sounding good, not even water, but that does, an ice-cold beer.’
I walked over to him with one, opened it, and handed it to him.
“We’ve drank a lot of beers, ain’t we, Frank?’
‘I guess so,’ I said and sat back down on the bed.”

The Flannigan brothers represent the forgettable guys we went to high school with, maybe played sports with, but will never cross our paths again. They will not have Facebook or LinkedIn accounts and will be no-shows at class reunions.

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veracity

His books have such heart .

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on November 1, 2022

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He is quickly turning into one of my favourite authors .
Circumstances can turn good men bad, and we can all fall victim to fate .
The Flannigan brothers only had each other , and alcohol , to rely on after their father left , and their mother died .

Frank stood in loco parentis to his brother Jerry Lee, so when his brother knocked over and killed a boy , they went on the run , selling what they could to survive . But even when on their uppers Frank still wanted to share what they had with people he felt they owed , and those people recognised the finer qualities in him .
A sad reflection on how a lack of support can so adversely affect young lives .

Billy

Enjoyable, despite being a little tame

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on September 26, 2014

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Whether or not you'll get anything out of this novel very much depends on what you want from a book. If you want tight, cleverly woven and complex plots, then you'd be better advised to go for the latest Dan Brown or Tom Clancy. If, however, such novels leave you cold, and you're the type that isn't overly concerned with 'plot', and prefers something with a little more heart, then by all means give it a go.

The Motel Life isn't without its flaws and does show some signs of being a debut novel. One of the most obvious and irritating of these is the 'filler', which uses the story-within-a-story technique to keep things flowing.

The first time the narrator tells another of the characters (to his girlfriend) a little fictional story, you'll smile and read it, seeing it as a nice little touch. The second time he does it (to a waitress in a cafe), you'll probably read it again, but begin to wonder what the the author's motives are. The third, fourth and fifth times he does it (to his brother), you'll grow impatient and probably skip the half a dozen pages, to the point at which the real story resumes.

To me, these stories-within-a-story are a major weak point in the novel, and it's a real shame the author gave up on the main theme by so often resorting to this filler technique.

It's also worth mentioning that I bought this book because I was looking for a decent road-trip novel, and while the first few chapters suggest this is what the reader is going to get, I never really felt like the 'road trip' ever took place, as the characters stay for so long in each of the various locations (of which there's only three). Moreover, each of these locations are very familiar to the characters, and I never really got a sense of them being 'on the road', in the sense I do with true road trip novels such as HST's Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.

The writing in this book is incredibly simple, narrated in the first-person by someone whose age I struggled to determine. The way in which the two main characters speak – particularly the narrator's brother – suggest mid to late teens, but the brief back-story of their lives suggests older.

On the whole – the story-within-a-story tactic aside – I enjoyed this book. I identified with and liked the characters, who were full, rounded and well-written.

Oh, and one more little point before I close. I could have done without the little sketches at the opening of each chapter, as it did make me feel a little like I was reading something aimed at the 'young adult' market.

One person found this helpful

Dr. J. Crawford

A Great Little Book

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on December 24, 2012

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Written with great economy the book tells the story of two brothers who are basically lowlifes one of whom whilst drink driving accidentally kills a kid on on a bicycle. From what unfolds we find that in fact there are no lowlifes, just people trying to get by and make sense of what is happening to them. Despite everything there is a generosity of spirit here together with a lot of insight. Because of this there is a note of optimism and decency pervading the story.
If you are familiar with Willy Vlautin's songs you will already be familiar with the subject matter of this story. It's a great little book with a simple theme. It is written in the first person (by one of the brothers) and the author captures the voice perfectly. There is absolutely no pretentiousness here.

3 people found this helpful

David C

A work of art

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on February 13, 2022

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Loved this book. So full of both sadness and compassion. Written in a free flowing easy to follow style. As has as many of the songs he written.

One person found this helpful

Paul

Double Dutch or German

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on May 13, 2019

Verified Purchase

I hardly understood one single solitary word of this on account of inadvertently ordering a German copy and not speaking German.

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