Hotels of North America

September 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.

September 1, 2015
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.

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November 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

Copyright 2015 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

October 15, 2015
Reginald Edward Morse, a hapless motivational speaker and compulsive traveler, is the top reviewer on RateYourLodging.com. In between his dour appraisals of the throw-pillow abuse typical of bed-and-breakfasts and the stale cookies in motel lobbies, he confesses his deeply neurotic feelings about identity, intimacy, loneliness, and love. Indicative of his failed relationships, he makes an extensive list of things you should not say to someone in your marriage ( don't put your bag on the bed; don't put your bag on the chair; don't put your bag on the counter ), relays the difficulties of his relationship with his daughter, and provides hilarious, if gross, details on his occasional relapses in his battle with alcoholism. Amid the drollery, Moody makes some salient points about the vagaries of online reviewing, the sorry state of the hospitality industry, and the increasing banality of modern life. 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.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2015, American Library Association.)