The Motel Life - Softcover

If McMurtry, Johnson, McGuane and Carver need a fifth to make up a literary five-a-side team, they need look no further than Willy Vlautin. The Motel Life is about the moving acceptance of life as bad luck, heartbreak, and a consistently thwarted but resolutely unkillable hope. Redemption comes through story-telling, and this is a tale told in a beautiful tone of deadpan wonder. (Niall Griffiths, author of Grits and Wreckage)

Acclaim for Willy Vlautin and Richmond Fontaine:
'Exquisitely bittersweet ... reading his lyrics made me wonder if it shouldn't be reviewed as our Book of the Month.'

(Uncut)

'A fabulous addition to the all-too-slim canon of passionate, literary rock'n'roll.'

(Guardian)

There are two particularly good fictional debuts: first, Willy Vlautin's The Motel Life, which echoes Of Mice and Men. The story of two brothers, it is set in a contemporary world of American highways, cheap diners and rundown lodging houses. The odds are stacked against the two, but the sadness of it all is mitigated by the resonance of the prose and a feeling I can only describe as "this is as it really is". (Rodney Troubridge The Bookseller 2006-01-13)

The hugely moving novel from Willy Vlautin, reissued with a new cover direction.