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BOOKLIST
The Motel Life.

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.

PUBLISHERS WEEKLY REVIEW
The Motel Life
by Willy Vlautin.
Published by Harper Perennial.

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)

THE AUSTRALIAN

Brothers' two-fold journey

The Motel Life

By Willy Vlautin

In a gambling town such as Reno , Nevada , where Jerry Lee and Frank Flannigan live, luck is an especially prized commodity. There isn't a lot of it going around, though, in the Flannigan household. Mum's dead and dad is long gone, with a trail of poker debts and jail time behind him.

To make things worse, older brother Jerry Lee lost a leg in a train-ride prank that went wrong and the two siblings, barely into adulthood, have menial jobs and few prospects. All they have is each other.

From this bleak scenario develops a simple, evocative tale of love and despair, seen through the eyes of Frank, who likes to make up stories, sometimes to entertain his

brother, and who guides us through the family's rocky history with a stoic yet somehow charming resignation.

The catalyst for the two young men embarking on "the motel life" is a hit-and-run accident. Jerry Lee kills a boy riding his bike in the middle of the night and in a panic convinces his brother to help him leave town before the police put two and two together.

What follows is a two-fold journey. One is into the past, where events that have shaped the pair's history and present are revealed through Frank's daydreams.

The other is into the future, where, you suspect, little more awaits them than the meagre lot of the unlucky.

Jerry Lee, it's clear, has no hope left. Disabled, broke and guilty about the hit-and-run, his only solace is in the love for and from his kid brother. After his remorse over the killing drives him to shoot himself in his damaged leg, Frank drags him out of hospital and they drive off into the night, stopping in flea-bitten motels and truck stops along the way, until they arrive in Erko, home to Frank's former girlfriend, Annie James. Redemption lies there, perhaps.

Willy Vlautin is a musician, the singer and songwriter in American roots band Richmond Fontaine, and this is his first novel. It's a remarkable debut, written in largely conversational prose that quickly gets inside the head of Frank, whose hopes of a better life manifest themselves through his vivid, storytelling imagination. To keep his brother amused, he conjures up fantastic adventures featuring the brothers in comic-book heroics, cleverly peppered with humour and pathos.

Vlautin draws a picture of everyday, small-town American life that rings true, thanks to a wealth of supporting characters such as Frank's chronically addicted gambler friend Tommy, and Earl, the boss from the car dealership who serves, in a small way, as Frank's surrogate father.

More than anything, the reader is entranced by the love between the hapless brothers. As Jerry Lee gets sicker and has to be nursed from motel room to motel room, everyday gestures such as going to buy soup and bread or changing his bandages become highly charged emotional statements. And all the while hanging over them is the fear of that police knock on the door.

Iain Shedden is a drummer who daylights as The Australian's music writer.

The London Times

Saturday April 29 2006

In the daytime Vlautin fronts the band Richmond Fontaine. His first novel is a rough, disturbing, heartbreaking piece of work. Frank and Jerry lee are brothers. The tragedy begins before the first page, when Jerry lee accidentally kills a young man. The brothers take to the road to escape consequences, and scrape along the very bottom of the American barrel. It's a desolate landscape, with barely a glimmer of hope, but Vlautin writes with

compassion and warmth. The text is interspersed with spiky and atmospheric drawings purportedly by Jerry Lee.

The INDEPENDENT NEWSPAPER

(LONDON, ENGLAND)

The Motel Life, by Willy Vlautin

A road trip through American fiction that travels light and fast

By Jonathan Gibbs

Published: 25 April 2006

At any given time there is, somewhere in American fiction, a man sitting in a bar, stone broke and drinking whiskey and beer, and wondering whether to turn up for work or just high-tail out of town. He's there in Bukowski, and Denis Johnson, and in newcomers like Matthew McIntosh. He's there too in this debut novel by Willy Vlautin, moonlighting from his day-job as singer-songwriter in alt.country band Richmond Fontaine.

The low-life glamour of gambling debts, dead-end jobs and permanent hangovers travels well. Not many people do anything similar over here, with the same sense of small town, big-sky melancholy. So British readers looking for a shot of post-Beat generation blues should reach with confidence for Vlautin's book, which details a few desperate weeks in the life of Frank Flannigan.

Frank's getting by on delivery work, and drinking most nights until he passes out, when "bad luck" arrives in the form of his brother Jerry Lee, who turns up at four in the morning, having just knocked down and killed a kid while driving drunk. They decide to run, heading north through driving snow. But the escape peters out, and they end up back home in Reno, Las Vegas's poor cousin in Nevada. The sad circle of the plot mirrors Frank's trapped thoughts that return obsessively to life before the death of their mother, and to his ex-girlfriend Annie James, whom he threw out when he found her turning tricks to save her prostitute mother's neck.

The brothers' relationship is at the centre of the book. Vlautin is clearly reaching back past Bukowski and the others to the granddaddy of all tragic road stories, that of Lenny and George in Of Mice and Men.

Jerry, with a missing leg after an accident jumping a freight train, is dependent on Frank for guidance and reassurance. Frank makes up bedtime stories to soothe his brother to sleep, whether holed up in a snowbound Montana field or another dingy motel room. The stories, with their childish mix of sex, adventure and optimism, stand in for Lenny and George's longed-for farm, with its famous rabbits. Frank and Jerry don't get their happy ending, but there is an unloved dog they adopt, and a final trip to track down Annie James. It's enough to give a sense of hope to this serene and assured piece of minor-key Americana.

"From one dank unwelcoming Nevada motel room to the next, two brothers, Frank and Jerry Lee, attempt to flee a hit-and-run in this frank and captivating literary debut from the frontman of alt-country rock outfit Richmond Fontaine. A tale of bad choices and worse luck, it's interspersed with melancholy comic strip vignettes of cheap diners and hospital rooms, all gently woven with Frank's imaginative stories of escaping to a better life. A future classic of American down-beat prose." Dazed & Confused magazine

"All told, the only book published in April that ought to induce a sort of knicker-wetting hysteria is Richmond Fontaine big man Willy Vlautin's debut, The Motel Life: all you need to know is this - if you like Fante or Bukowski or Denis Johnson or Raymond Carver or just boozy frazzled Americana, this is a book to get VERY EXCITED ABOUT! Alright?" Bookmunch.co.uk

"A hugely compassionate, wildly original road movie of a novel about two brothers, Frank and Jerry, who are trying to escape the ramifications of a fatal hit-and-run accident. The warm-hearted folksy balladeer proves he's just as much at home on the printed page as he is behind a mic, with detailed yet understated drawings complementing the tale." Esquire mag advance quote

"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.'" Bookseller

Angus Cargill, Editor at Faber said The Motel Life is a fantastic piece of storytelling, sad, harrowing and authentic, but with a beautifully understated sense of redemption to it. As a prose writer he is absolutely the real thing and a great discovery for us.'

Opening like an early Tom Waits barstool-tale, The Motel Life tells the story of two brothers, Frank and Jerry Lee. Taking to the road in an attempt to escape the hit and run accident caused by Jerry Lee, the novel goes back to tell the story of their unhappy lives, lives afflicted by drink, economic circumstance and family misfortune. With intense feeling and compassion, Vlautin explores the frustrations and failed dreams of the two brothers.

Interspersed with drawings that come to form an integral part of the narrative, The Motel Life is a poetic, moving, beautifully naive and tragic fictional debut. Alongside such seminal works as Annie Proulx's Postcards, Raymond Carver's What we talk about when we talk about love and Denis Johnson's Jesus' Son, it should come to be seen as a classic of downbeat American prose.

For further information, please contact Anna Pallai in Publicity on 020 7465 7556 or at anna.pallai@faber.co.uk

Publicity Contact Australia and New Zealand: Kelly Doust at Allen and Unwin publicity@allenandunwin.com