Hotels of North America by Rick Moody (English) Paperback Book

Description: Hotels of North America by Rick Moody From the acclaimed Rick Moody, 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 on RateYourLodging.com, where his many reviews reveal more than just details of hotels around the globe -- they tell his life story. The puzzle of Reginalds life comes together through reviews that comment upon his motivational speaking career, the dissolution of his marriage, the separation from his beloved 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 Moodys masterly ability to push the bounds of the novel. FORMAT Paperback LANGUAGE English CONDITION Brand New Author Biography Rick Moody was born in New York City. He attended Brown and Columbia Universities. He is the author of four previous novels: The Four Fingers of Death, Purple America, The Ice Storm, and Garden State, as well as an award-winning memoir and multiple collections of short fiction. Moody is the recipient of a Guggenheim fellowship, and his work has been anthologized in Best American Stories, Best American Essays, and the Pushcart Prize anthology. He lives in Brooklyn, New York. Review "The novels prose has a slapdash swagger . . . Moody endows Reginald with a neo-Nabokovian fancy prose style that engenders much of the novels humor. The unexpected thing is how poignant some of his reflections can be, whether theyre introspective or outward observations . . . With Hotels in North America," Moody portrays a man who cant settle on who he wants to be, dwelling in a tired country that no longer knows what it is . . . While Moody is obviously lampooning the self-help bromides that are part of Reginalds motivational-seminar arsenal, theres a vein of sincerity in play here, too . . . The wastrel waywardness of the novel is energizing, and its wrestling with the irresolvable loose ends of personality has a wry and powerful melancholy." --Michael Upchurch, San Francisco Chronicle Praise for Hotels of North America "This is Moodys best novel in many years. Its a little book, a bagatelle, but its a little book of irony and wit and heartbreak. It is insightful...In Hotels of North America [Moody] eases back on the throttle, and his engine begins to purr...This novels elastic format--short hotel reviews--gives Moody a lot of room to improvise and play, and play he does. He is terrific." --Dwight Garner, New York Times "Evocative of Nabokov and Borges, Moodys new novel, Hotels of North America, presents...the slow revelation of [Reginald Morses] chief sorrows and regrets. His has been a bumbling life of continual indignities and clutch failures...Funny and companionable in his at times repellent way, Morse is a snob in embarrassed circumstances, often defensively misanthropic, lordly even in self-confessed defeat...Like Rick Moody, an ironized version of whom contributes an afterword, Morse is a fluid writer of often careening musicality (a taxonomy of the matrimonial bed as a place of actual or elusive sleep is particularly alive), and the reviews employ some of Moodys signatures...Along with laughs...there are several moving, hollowed-out mediations here. You probably wont come to love Reginald Morse, but quite likely hell earn your sympathy."--Dylan Hicks, Minneapolis Star Tribune "Formally daring, often very funny, and surprisingly moving. It should earn Moody new fans from a millennial cohort that was still in diapers back when he was basking in his early critical acclaim...Part of what makes Hotels of North Americaas breezy as it is rewarding is its structure, which in our era of digital discourse manages to feel both unorthodox and perfectly familiar. The story unfolds as a series of online reviews for the Web site RateYourLodging.com, all of which have been submitted by one Reginald Edward Morse, a reviewer of such entertaining prolixity and discursive majesty that the adjective Nabokovian immediately comes to mind. (It will come to mind more than once throughout the novel.)"--Jeff Turrentine, Washington Post"Hotels of North America has its charming moments, and when the author lets his character be vulnerable, the results are extraordinary."--Michael Schaub, Los Angeles Times "Hotels of North America purports to be a non-chronological collection of Morses best reviews from 1996 to 2014, and his attempted descriptions of the lonely rooms offered by American budget travel provide the reader with fragmentary glimpses of a tragicomic life - one furiously examined and fleetingly lived.Other reviewers have noted the Nabokovian style of Moodys novel, and Morses reviews bear a resemblance to the footnotes in Pale Fire, where the absurd delusions and digressions of the narrator start to eclipse their scholarly tone. Hotels suggests that the comedy of Pale Fire can now be found online, where personal and professional voices fluidly intermingle, offering writing that has the potential to go anywhere and sometimes nowhere as well. All the doors are open and there are always vacancies. Four stars."--Julian Novitz, The Listener (New Zealand)"An intriguing, mercurial take on love, loneliness, connection, redemption, and online life, among other things."--The Buffalo News"An inventive and very fun novel." --Vanity Fair "In this entertaining critique of contemporary culture, written with vibrancy and wit, Moody not only provides a nuanced portrait of an Everyman but also deploys his playful yet artful approach to language."--Booklist "Moody at his most inventive, most playful, most bitter and biting and cruel" --Jason Sheehan, NPR "Moody offers both a subtle psychological portrait and even the hint of a mystery-what I would call the mystery of Reginald Morse, he writes with game-is-afoot breathlessness in an afterword. Its a slyly delightful turn, considering all weve learned about Reginald and his views....Lively and lightly written....A sardonic but entertaining look at modern American life." --Kirkus "Moody swings around on paragraphs like the chandelier you ride on at the end of a party." --Alexander Chee, The New Republic "Moodys clever latest explores the narrative possibilities fo online reviews, that form of democratic criticism crucial to the success of everything from toaster ovens to literature itself....The online reviews look back over a period of roughly forty years, from Morses childhood stay at the Plaza Hotel in 1971 to a visit to a bedbug-infested Bronx motel in 2014. In his delightful archness and strategic reticence, Morse is reminiscent of the epicurean narrator of John Lanchesters The Debt to Pleasure.... This is an amusing, vibrant narrative." --Publishers Weekly "Moodys prose, as befits the writers writer he is, possesses a sinuous, entangling power. His long, far-ranging sentences beguile with surprises and the sheer beauty of craftsmanship. Hes also funny...The novel contains many moments of profound insight and pointed comedy...[Moodys] decadent prose hits the mark."--Claire Fallon, Huffington Post "Morse is both a reliable and unreliable narrator, and a mesmerizing one. As he tries to put the best face on a crumbling career and unraveled marriage, he is at turns comic and heartbreaking...From one review to the next, Moody effectively shows how a one-on-one relationship with the blank screen of a blog post can seduce a writer into surprising levels of sharing with his audience...Its hard not to be touched by Morse and his eccentricities. You find yourself wishing him well, and are glad you knew him, however briefly."--Carol Iaciofano, The Artery, WBUR "Rick Moodys latest work, Hotels of North America, is an entertaining and frenetic epistolary-like novel that follows the peregrinations of protagonist Reginald Edward Morse . . . He is almost always very funny . . . In Moodys deft hands, hotels become a kind of purgatory for Morse to reflect upon his many sins . . . The utter disaster that is Reginald Edward Morse makes for uniquely compelling narration. The most banal amenities become life rafts to a man on the cusp of soul death . . . Above all, Morse has a profound gift for observational humor. Hotels of North America is filled with the kinds of jokes and big-picture insight found in the most entertaining criticism . . . Moody triumphs in writing a little book that raises such big questions." --Eugenia Williamson, Boston Globe "Rick Moodys latest literary gem."--The Associated Press "Rick Moodys take on the midlife crisis is such a familiar yet nuanced tale told in such an intriguing, inventive way that it feels fresh-or at least worthwhile . . . Reginald and his frequent companion, referred to only as K., are low-level scam artists, and a couple of their escapades are set pieces of high comedy . . . Even when hes in the doldrums, even when hes staying at the sketchiest motel in the most terrifying of neighborhoods, Reginalds wry, articulate invoicing of his failures (alongside those of the motel) is never grim enough to be off-putting . . . Hotels of North America is frequently very funny . . . Its a strangely touching story of disillusionment, loneliness, and regret." --Jill Wilson, Winnipeg Free Press "The eloquent author of [these] reviews frequently deviates into full-on brilliance....Reginald is undeniably funny....This book had me giggling so often and so loudly that I began to annoy the person with whom I dwell. Reading Hotels of North America as I did, over the course of two days, seemed the perfect dose of humor and insight. All comic novels should aspire to such heights....My interest and investment only deepened as the novel wore on, as Moody revealed not only a man, but an entire culture through these scattered fragments that mirror the workings of memory and of read day-to-day living. Four out of four stars."--Drew Nellins Smith, The Millions "The way Moody illustrates the depth of his narrator, Reginald Morse, marks the book as one of the years most interesting reads."--Paste "Throughout Hotels of North America, Rick Moody serves up a blend of sophistication and melancholy . . . This novel, brief as it is, allows the author his fullest range of play to date . . . Hotels often brings off paradoxes: a sweet stay that turns to a bitter memory, or a farce that tumbles into an abyss of grief. Most of the funny business derives from an unsparing honesty about the American hardscrabble . . . This book is full of magic tricks."--John Domini, Philadelphia Inquirer"Throughout the novel, Morses shattered life takes on ever sharper edges, as he plows into the desultory American landscape with all the eagerness of a middle-aged man of waning prospects...Moodys sweet spot in Hotels of North America is quotidian detail tinged with some deeper existential unease: Fear and Trembling at the Holiday Inn, if you will. Over and over, with an impressive attention to the nuances of the hospitality industry, Moody manages to suffuse your average roadside lodging with a kind of life-sapping dread...This is a very literary novel, cleverly constructed and written in an arch, clever, very literary voice, at once mannered and unrestrained, like an aging patrician after his third drink...But if Moody can sometimes untether himself from plot and character, it is because he seems more interested in existential truths than novelistic conventions. This novel is short and plangent and...frequently beautiful. If it were a hotel room, youd give it four stars."--Alexander Nazaryan, Newsweek Review Quote "[Moodys] energy and sheer inventiveness make The Four Fingers of Death an original and exhilarating read."-- Jane Ciabattari, NPR.com Details ISBN031617856X Author Rick Moody Short Title HOTELS OF NORTH AMER Language English ISBN-10 031617856X ISBN-13 9780316178563 Media Book Format Paperback Residence Brooklyn, NY, US Year 2016 Publication Date 2016-11-15 Imprint Back Bay Books Country of Publication United States AU Release Date 2016-11-15 NZ Release Date 2016-11-15 US Release Date 2016-11-15 UK Release Date 2016-11-15 Pages 208 DEWEY FIC Audience General Publisher Little, Brown & Company Place of Publication New York We've got this At The Nile, if you're looking for it, we've got it. With fast shipping, low prices, friendly service and well over a million items - you're bound to find what you want, at a price you'll love! 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