The Motel Life

Iain Shedden

The Motel Life
By Willy Vlautin
Faber & Faber, 206pp, $29.95

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.