Quotes
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
