Narrator Jefferson Mays taps into the darkly disappointing life of Rick Moody's protagonist, Reginald Edward Morse, a man whose hobby is rating hotels online. Mays's drab tone heightens the irony of Morse's job as a motivational speaker. It also spotlights the depressed state of the character, who initially takes to the Internet to share his hotel experiences but ultimately winds up telling his life story. The intensity Mays infuses into Morse when he addresses his critics augments Moody's sardonic portrayal of the online rating phenomenon, making it darkly humorous. Mays's performance of this offbeat novel is well crafted and entertaining, but it's best not to listen to this audiobook en route to a hotel if one has anxiety about bedbugs. J.F. © AudioFile 2015, Portland, Maine
Hotels of North America
Narrated by Jefferson Mays
Rick MoodyUnabridged — 6 hours, 31 minutes
Hotels of North America
Narrated by Jefferson Mays
Rick MoodyUnabridged — 6 hours, 31 minutes
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Overview
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 Reginald's 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 Moody's masterly ability to push the bounds of the novel.
Editorial Reviews
The novel is a kind of character study, but instead of illuminating character with the high-wattage klieg lights that a novelist has at his disposal, Moody goes in with a penlight, using the faintness and narrowness of its beam both to induce a sense of mystery and to kick around our concepts of what's perceivable about others.
This is Mr. Moody's best novel in many years. It's a little book, a bagatelle, but it's a little book of irony and wit and heartbreak. It is insightful on topics like the joy of stockpiling hotel hair-care products while also asking the big questions, such as, "Which man among us is not, most of the time, possessed of the desire to curl himself into a fetal ball?…At its heart, Hotels of North America is a close examination of the middle-aged American male in sexual, emotional and financial free fall.
09/14/2015
Moody’s (The Four Fingers of Death) clever latest explores the narrative possibilities of online reviews, that form of democratic criticism crucial to the success of everything from toaster ovens to literature itself. The novel consists primarily of an idiosyncratic collection of hotel reviews written by Reginald Edward Morse, a sporadically employed motivational speaker leading a life of “nomadic compulsion.” A hotel site’s top reviewer, whose real-life identity is a mystery, Morse mixes in autobiographical accounts of his own professional, familial, and romantic failures amid disquisitions on the “diversity of key and lock design” and hotel pornography (“at the heart of travel in America”). The online reviews look back over a period of roughly 40 years, from Morse’s 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 Lanchester’s The Debt to Pleasure. However, the wryly perceptive passages about the hospitality industry, which include a hatchet job on bed-and-breakfast inns, occasionally give way to slightly mawkish outpourings. And the afterword, in which Moody inserts himself into the text to track down the “fragmentary” Morse, could’ve been removed. Still, this is an amusing, vibrant narrative. Agent: Melanie Jackson, Melanie Jackson Agency. (Nov.)
Praise for Hotels of North America
"This is Moody's best novel in many years. It's a little book, a bagatelle, but it's 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 novel's 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
"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
"Throughout the novel, Morse's 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...Moody's 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, you'd give it four stars."—Alexander Nazaryan, Newsweek
"The novel's prose has a slapdash swagger . . . Moody endows Reginald with a neo-Nabokovian 'fancy prose style' that engenders much of the novel's humor. The unexpected thing is how poignant some of his reflections can be, whether they're introspective or outward observations . . . With Hotels in North America," Moody portrays a man who can't 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 Reginald's motivational-seminar arsenal, there's 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
"Rick Moody's 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 Moody's 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
"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
"Moody's prose, as befits the writer's writer he is, possesses a sinuous, entangling power. His long, far-ranging sentences beguile with surprises and the sheer beauty of craftsmanship. He's also funny...The novel contains many moments of profound insight and pointed comedy...[Moody's] decadent prose hits the mark."—Claire Fallon, Huffington Post
"Moody at his most inventive, most playful, most bitter and biting and cruel" —Jason Sheehan, NPR
"An inventive and very fun novel." —Vanity Fair
"Rick Moody's 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 he's in the doldrums, even when he's staying at the sketchiest motel in the most terrifying of neighborhoods, Reginald's 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 . . . It's a strangely touching story of disillusionment, loneliness, and regret." —Jill Wilson, Winnipeg Free Press
"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...It's 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
"The way Moody illustrates the depth of his narrator, Reginald Morse, marks the book as one of the year's most interesting reads."—Paste
"Moody swings around on paragraphs like the chandelier you ride on at the end of a party." —Alexander Chee, The New Republic
"Evocative of Nabokov and Borges, Moody's new novel, Hotels of North America, presents...the slow revelation of [Reginald Morse's] 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 Moody's signatures...Along with laughs...there are several moving, hollowed-out mediations here. You probably won't come to love Reginald Morse, but quite likely he'll earn your sympathy."
—Dylan Hicks, Minneapolis Star Tribune
"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
"Rick Moody's latest literary gem."—The Associated 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
"An intriguing, mercurial take on love, loneliness, connection, redemption, and online life, among other things."
—The Buffalo News
"Moody's 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 Morse's 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 Lanchester's The Debt to Pleasure.... This is an amusing, vibrant narrative." —Publishers Weekly
"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. It's a slyly delightful turn, considering all we've learned about Reginald and his views....Lively and lightly written....A sardonic but entertaining look at modern American life." —Kirkus
"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
"Hotels of North America purports to be a non-chronological collection of Morse's 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 Moody's novel, and Morse's 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)
11/15/2015
Divorced father, motivational speaker, and once-prolific contributor of hotel reviews to rateyourlodging.com, Reginald Edward Morse has vanished from the online scene, sending an author named Moody on a quest to find him, or at least to understand him. Morse's several dozen hotel reviews, ostensibly compiled for a Moody-edited volume in a travel guide series, include his 1971 impressions of a childhood New Year's Eve spent at New York City's Plaza Hotel with his mother and her "entrepreneur" boyfriend and various domestic and European stays with his first wife and then his lover, known only as "K." His musings on key cards, complimentary toiletries, hotel pornography, and the overabundance of throw pillows and potpourri in American B&Bs are interspersed with the details of his failures as a father and his dwindling speaking career. In the end, a darkly comic (and remarkably comprehensive) vision of a man and of the American traveler's world emerge in this fun and edgy novel. VERDICT Fans of award-winning novelist and essayist Moody (The Ice Storm; Garden State) will not be disappointed. Those new to his work may find this a particularly accessible first choice.—Jennifer B. Stidham, Houston Community Coll. Northeast
Narrator Jefferson Mays taps into the darkly disappointing life of Rick Moody's protagonist, Reginald Edward Morse, a man whose hobby is rating hotels online. Mays's drab tone heightens the irony of Morse's job as a motivational speaker. It also spotlights the depressed state of the character, who initially takes to the Internet to share his hotel experiences but ultimately winds up telling his life story. The intensity Mays infuses into Morse when he addresses his critics augments Moody's sardonic portrayal of the online rating phenomenon, making it darkly humorous. Mays's performance of this offbeat novel is well crafted and entertaining, but it's best not to listen to this audiobook en route to a hotel if one has anxiety about bedbugs. J.F. © AudioFile 2015, Portland, Maine
2015-08-18
A motivational speaker, who's often on the road dispensing wisdom though he has problems of his own, turns to reviewing hotels online—and Moody tells his story primarily through his reviews. Thanks for the synopsis, Captain Obvious. The conceit runs deeper, for Moody's (The Four Fingers of Death, 2010, etc.) Reginald Edward Morse—his trinomial perhaps an indication of Brahmanic tendencies and amplitude of ego—has a seeming need to criticize, sometimes fussily but usually rightly, and moreover to let the world know of it. The M&M cookies are a little stale? Send a dispatch, and then reflect and perhaps grouse: "when I am stressing, in a lecture on motivational speaking, how certain words can do a lot for you, fresh is often a word I often rely on." Reginald has a few characteristics in common with Anne Tyler's Macon Leary, though in The Accidental Tourist, Tyler takes a somewhat more forgiving view of us foible-philic humans. As Reginald moves from hotel to hotel and continent to continent (for, as we learn, he's not confined to North America), we discover, detail by carefully rationed detail, more about his life: he has control issues, he has a checkered family history and a troubled daughter, he often travels with a companion, he has a thing for grits ("and I do not mean cheese grits"). All pretty ordinary, really, the failings and the accomplishments, but 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. It's a slyly delightful turn, considering all we've learned about Reginald and his views, whether on hotel pornography or the three chief shortcomings of B&Bs: "throw pillows, potpourri, and breakfast conversation." To say nothing of gazebos. Lively and lightly written. Not the strongest of Moody's books but of a piece with them, offering a sardonic but entertaining look at modern American life.
Product Details
| BN ID: | 2940173720658 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Hachette Audio |
| Publication date: | 11/10/2015 |
| Edition description: | Unabridged |
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