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Liepman Literary Agency
Marc Koralnik |
| Original language | |
| English | |
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| http://www.rickmoodybooks.com/ | |
HOTELS OF NORTH AMERICA
A darkly comic portrait of a man who comes to life in the most unexpected of ways: through his online reviews.
Reginald Edward Morse is one of the top reviewers for RateYourLodging.com , where his many reviews reveal more than just the details of hotels and motels around the globe-they tell his life story. The puzzle of Reginald's life comes together through reviews that comment upon his motivational-speaking career, the dissolution of his marriage, the separation from his daughter, and his devotion to an amour known only as "K." But when Reginald disappears, we are left with the fragments of a life-or at least the life he has carefully constructed-which writer Rick Moody must make sense of. An inventive blurring of the lines between the real and the fabricated, HOTELS OF NORTH AMERICA demonstrates anew Moody's masterly ability to push the bounds of the novel, and to entertain as he enlightens These assembled reviews constitute a life story told in outbursts, unrestrained opinions, and lamentations on diverse subjects, both picaresque and episodic, but with especial concentration on the dissolution of Morse's marriage, his estrangement from his one child, and his subsequent attempt to rebuild a life for himself with a fellow world-traveler, known only by the initial K. and by her occasional insistence on being called by a variety of bird names. Morse's preeminently vexing problem is his difficulty, in middle age, finding gainful employment, and at various moments during his overnights in chain motels, etc., Morse claims to be a hedge fund manager, the founder of an evangelical sect, and a motivational speaker. None of these vocations, however, is as steady as his freelance hotel reviewing. As in the case of Vladimir Nabokov's Pale Fire, this is a comedy about love and loss in which character is revealed despite the best intentions of the narrator. It is also a book about what home is and is not, and the difficulties of identity and the stable self in our ethereal digital present, in which everyone is a critic. The story ranges across place and time and from belly laugh to keen heartache. This edition is also noteworthy for the inclusion of an afterword by editor and noted contemporary writer Rick Moody in which Moody discusses how he became aware of the small outsider cult of Reginald Morse, and the various conspiracy theories about the true identity of the writer of these irreverent hotel reviews. Rick Moody's acclaimed and prizewinning books include the novels Garden State, The Ice Storm, Purple America, The Diviners, and The Four Fingers of Death; the short fiction collections The Ring of Brightest Angels Around Heaven, Demonology, and Right Livelihoods; and a memoir, The Black Veil. He lives in Brooklyn. Praise for Rick Moody's THE FOUR FINGERS OF DEATH Moody's enormous gifts as a writer are on full display.The New York Times Book Review Often hilarious Rick Moody takes a sly, Swiftian approach to sci-fi An original and exhilarating read. National Public Radio This is Moody uncorked, slyly going back to the wordy, toothsome, nineteenth-century novel, with a science-fiction twist.Los Angeles Times The Four Fingers of Death is entertaining and often poignant, probing the limits of technology, consciousness, and language in the face of grief.The New Yorker Mr. Moody's best writing in years. It is The Ice Storm in space Masterful, certainly matching, even at times surpassing, Kurt Vonnegut The Four Fingers of Death is fun to read.New York Observer A zesty satire, a sprawling epic with one eye on today's headlines and another eye (biometric eye, no doubt) on the future.Dallas Morning News
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Book
Published 2015-11-01 by Little, Brown |