The Motel Life

Q: You know what happens when you play a country song backwards?
A: You get your house back, you get your girl back, and your dog comes back to life.

The two brothers Frank and Jerry Lee Flannigan are losers in every sense of the word. They lost their parents when they were young, they've lost their chances at making something of themselves, they lost their house, Frank lost his girlfriend and Jerry Lee lost his leg; now they're stuck in Reno, surviving from day to day in any way they can, drinking far too much and hanging onto their dreams not because they have any illusions about them coming true anymore but just because it seems to be all that's left. Until Jerry Lee bursts into Frank's room one night, inconsolable, and tells him he show more got behind the wheel after one drink too many, ran over a kid and now he doesn't know what to do. And all the things in their lives that have remained at a shaky status quo for years suddenly get put to the test.

And us, we took the bad luck and strapped it around our feet like concrete. We did the worst imaginable thing you could do. We ran away.

Vlautin's debut novel has a fantastic sense of... presence. He plants his reader right in the narrator Frank's head as he tries to save his brother and himself, in a succinct but incredibly descriptive prose. You could make much of the similarities to American storytellers like Carver, Denis Johnson or Yates, and the dustjacket does, repeatedly; but at the same time, Vlautin is a musician as well and The Motel Life reminds me of nothing so much as some song Tom Waits should have written - perhaps "Burma Shave", the story of a young girl who hitches a ride with Elvis Presley's ghost and ends up dead in a ditch to the tune of "Summertime", or "Christmas Card From A Hooker In Minneapolis", or "9th and Hennepin"... it's all dingy bars, used car lots and empty whiskey bottles, but also a set of characters that for all their fucked-up lives never come across as clichéd white trash jokes. Vlautin genuinely loves his losers and wants them to make it even though both he and his readers know they probably won't, and there is something beautiful in all of them. Jerry Lee draws every part of his life in black and white, and Frank keeps telling elaborate stories that all seem like fictional variations on his own life and dreams; anything to stay alive.

Look, here's a piece of advice. I don't know if it's any good or not for you, you're the only one who'll know if it is. What you got to do is think about the life you want, think about it in your head. Make it a place where you want to be; a ranch, a beach house, a penthouse on the top of a skyscraper. It doesn't matter what it is, but a place that you can hide out in. When things get rough, go there. And if you find a place and it quits working, just change it. (...) Hope is the key. You can make shit up, there's no law against that. Make up some place you and your brother can go if you want. It might not work, but it might. Ain't too hard to try.

And it does work, if not always for Frank then at least for Vlautin. Sure, there's a few points where you wonder just how much more he is going to put his characters through the wringer, but he always stays on just the right side of melodrama... after all, what is a good country song but a series of just slightly exaggerated everyday stories set to music that tugs at something in your chest? Willy Vlautin knows how to make a typewriter sound like a weeping pedal steel guitar, I just got to know Frank and Jerry Lee better than I might have wanted to, and it breaks my fucking heart. show less

This is the second Vlautin novel I've read, and while I didn't like it as much as [Lean on Pete], it was still a satisfying read for me. Vlautin specializes in the hardscrabble life of down-on-their-luck characters - Life's supposed losers - who aren't inherently bad but often make bad choices. They can be frustrating to read about but a good writer can imbue them with sympathy and complexity. That's what Vlautin seems to do so well. This is the story of two brothers who can't catch a break - sometimes because they are really dumb and sometimes because they don't realize the chances in front of them. Despite their tough existence, their love and care for each other grounds them and prods each of them to keep going and keep trying. It's show more not a happy story but it is not without hope. show less

This book is the story of two brothers living on the fringes of society in Reno, barely scraping by; the kind of people you might briefly wonder how they got where they are if you were to see them on the street. One of the brothers, Jerry-Lee is simple-minded, and Frank had promised his mother that he would look after Jerry-Lee after her death. When things get bad, Frank tells Jerry-Lee stories about the wonderful future that awaits them some day. Jerry-Lee believes these fantasies; Frank realizes their impossibility. When Jerry-Lee is involved in a hit and run accident, the two brothers go on the run.

In a lot of ways, this novel echoes Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men. It is unremittingly bleak and despairing, yet as a character study of show more the two brothers and their relationship, it is a beautiful book. show less

Can't rate this - my reaction is too conflicted. See, the thing is, I live in Carson City. I know people like this. I work hard to use more sense than they do, and to distance myself from their drama. I don't need to watch people being stupid enough to be usually drunk and sad, rather than getting their shit together.

And the other thing is, I'm not sure other people do, either. It's as if Vlautin is exploiting these unfortunate folks, just so the literary world can get its kicks. Also, there's a lot in here that just doesn't ring true, and I'm pretty sure the author doesn't really know what it's like to live in this world and not be able to see a way out.

Otoh, it was a kick learning a bit more about our area and seeing it through his show more eyes. And he does write well. I just think [b:The Outsiders|231804|The Outsiders|S.E. Hinton|https://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1314327508s/231804.jpg|1426690] and [b:The Basketball Diaries|682745|The Basketball Diaries|Jim Carroll|https://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1331057236s/682745.jpg|922689] are better. show less

The Motel Life by Willy Vlautin is a very highly recommended, honest story of two brothers on the edge of society just trying to get by while down on their luck. This was Vlautin's debut novel and in it you can see the impetus for the novels that followed.

Two Reno, Nevada, brothers, Jerry Lee and Frank Flannigan, go on the run after a Jerry Lee accidentally kills a kid in a hit-and-run accident late at night during a snow storm. After the accident Jerry Lee turns to Frank for help and the two go on the run. They eventually end up back in Reno. Then, overwhelmed with guilt, Jerry Lee tries to kill himself by shooting his already partially amputated leg. He ends up in the hospital where Frank, who is constantly drinking, visits him, show more telling him stories to take his mind off things. Frank also rescues a dog while worrying about his brother.

Frank is the narrator of this novel that is about more than two brothers making poor choices. Their mom is dead, their father is gone, and all they have is each other. These young men are both talented, Frank with his stories and Jerry Lee with drawing, and given a chance in life could have accomplished more than living in residential motels, taking dead end jobs and drinking too much. The stories Frank tells provide the hope and escapism his brother needs. There is also a story about Frank's previous girlfriend, Annie, that finds closure.

This is a sad, but simple story of two young men living lonely, troubled, bleak lives in an alcoholic haze while walking the thin line between hope and desperation. Reading several of Vlautin's other novels before this debut novel actually made me appreciate it much more because you can see what is to come. I have enjoyed my Vlautin marathon immensely and just have one more left to read.

http://www.shetreadssoftly.com/2025/11/the-motel-life.html show less

John McCain could learn a thing or two about "straight talk" from reading Willy Vlautin. Vlautin's The Motel Life is one of the straightest shooting novels I've read in many a day. Make that year. So straight it becomes poetic. It's a tender, sad, funny messy hangover of a book that constantly had me slowing down because I was getting to close to the end. There are some writers you want to read and read again. You anticipate their next books, look for them. bide your time. There are other writers you think of in this way, but even more than that, what you'd really like to do is get drunk with them and have them tell you stories. Willy Vlautin falls in this latter category.

Another guy who could learn a thing or two from Willy is Charles show more Bock. Both novels come out of the casino littered landscape of Nevada. Bock's Beautiful Children is borne and bred in Las Vegas. Vlautin's Flannigan Brothers and their parents, drinking buddies, gambling partners, and girlfriends crash in every motel with a flicker of neon in the environs of Reno. I wanna play some blackjack in Reno. I already know where to eat and crash.

Damn if I'm not gonna have to put this at the very top of my 'Best Reads So Far' this year. Ahead even of my very favorite author, J. M. Coetzee. This was a 30-1 shot. This was the triple crown winner getting nipped at the wire. Sure, it wasn't his (Coetzee's) best race - but an impressive few furlongs in any case. The litany of motels checked into and out of in this novel, the prodigious number of 6-packs bought and consumed is impressive. You can't help but love the full throttle sprint to try and stay just ahead of disaster and bad luck.

Here are some random parts of Vlautin's (too) short episodic novel that I loved:

Frank and his brother (Jerry Lee) have come home from swimming in the river one evening and their mother (who is dying of cancer) has fixed them a special meal, to go along with a heart to heart on their future after she is gone.

'What's the occasion?' I asked.

'That we're all sitting here. That I have my two boys, that it's sunny out, that you two went swimming, that we have steaks.'

It's a lovely and poignant few pages, and typical of the heart-felt sentiments that never, ever have a whiff of anything but real people expressing real sentiments.

Frank is always telling (or writing) stories for his brother, many about being abducted by aliens. Once, when Frank is sitting in the hospital with the dozing Jerry Lee who has attempted suicide by shooting himself in his half-leg (the rest had been lost in a freight-car hopping accident), he writes him a letter-story. In it, having taken the persona of Dickie Van Buren, he finds himself in the possession of an old woman's poodle (she has been run over by a bus).

I decided to move to Alaska that night. The last frontier. The last place in America for freedom, for individuality, for honor, for peace. It's also a great place to raise a dog....

Ten days later I was sitting in a bar in Juneau, Alaska. Some of the weirdest people I'd ever seen in my life live up there. I spent the first week in a motel watching TV and reading Jack London. Got through most of the whole collection. I wanted to study, I really did, but after reading White Fang I knew that the wilderness was no place to live. Have you read that fucking book? You'd have to be nuts to live like that. Out in a cabin with no TV and no heat. And then it dawned on me, I got a fucking poodle, not a husky. I'd need a fucking husky, but then I liked the poodle. I didn't know what to do.

Nevada's John McCain has his Straight Talk Express. But WIlly Vlautin has the hard-scrabble denizens of Reno. Many of them offer their philosophies of life. In another one of the stories that he tells Jerry Lee, Frank offers up the story of how their father met their mother - including the story of Iris, the woman he met before their mother. Iris offered this wisdom to their father, Jimmy:

"My mother taught me how to survive in this world. My mother said that each of us is like an M&M in a blender full of ice cream. We all try to avoid getting chopped up. We do most anything to avoid getting sliced, but in the end most of us get the chop and become nothing more than a part of the milk shake. With no difference, no will, all the pressure of the world beating us down, making us like everyone else. But I ain't giving up. My mother taught me the basic three words: Good handgun knowledge. And believe me, it really does help a girl out."

In a P.S. Afterword, Vlautin is asked about his "approach to fiction". Where does he write (he lives now in Portland, Oregon)? At the local race track. This is so right. For anyone who's spent time at the track (the dog track especially), you have already seen characters right out of Vlautin's novel. It's not so much that he's brought them to life. It's more that he's opened up his pages to them and lent an ear.

Bravo! The Motel Life gets my highest, unqualified recommendation - one I never give lightly and generally resist considering various tastes, etc. All that's out the window with this one. This one is eerily of our times. show less

3.25 stars. my first vlautin and i will definitely keep reading him. this is a really hard but beautiful story, which is right up my alley. sad and touching with straightforward writing that is perfect for what he's doing here.