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stephynee's review against another edition
2.0
I found this book really difficult to get through. The story picks up about 2/3s in, but it wasn't enough for me to forgive the never-ending descriptions of every aspect of the hotel setting. Dull plot aside, I hated the protagonist. I knew I was never going to like him when at one point, he chooses not to get room service dessert because it felt "effeminate". I can't get behind a character that doesn't want dessert.
lazygal's review against another edition
3.0
As someone who has been to quite a few conferences (not as an exhibitor, just as an attendee or presenter), there is something to the idea of a conference surrogate that's just... intriguing. Seriously intriguing. Of course, to use a service like that would be wrong. But... well... And the bland sameness of chain hotel rooms is something with which I'm familiar, so there's that part of this book I identify with.
Had there been less soliloquizing (if that isn't a word, tough) and fewer descriptive passages, particularly in the last third of the book, it could have been an easy 5 star. But that last third? Sorry. It just needed something - editing? direction? Something, anyway.
ARC provided by publisher.
Had there been less soliloquizing (if that isn't a word, tough) and fewer descriptive passages, particularly in the last third of the book, it could have been an easy 5 star. But that last third? Sorry. It just needed something - editing? direction? Something, anyway.
ARC provided by publisher.
panpan's review against another edition
4.0
I really quite liked this book, especially the last (third) part. I do however think that the whole middle section (part II) could have simply been taken out - it takes too long for the protagonist to figure out something that the reader has already guessed for a long time. The pace at the end is quite good and I really like the way it ended, even though it had a rather slow start.
krayfish1's review against another edition
4.0
This book really stands out in its descriptions of bland corporate hotels and the horrible freeways that surround them. Highly recommended to anyone who travels for work too much and stays in too many bland corporate hotels. Also for people who have experienced both excellent customer service and "I'm sorry the computer doesn't let me do that" customer service.
The main character is a bit of a sexist dick -- he sees women mainly as potential sex-partners for one-night stands -- but the author makes him experience consequences for this attitude, and implies that the women in the story have full lives of their own outside of the rather limited main character's view of them.
The main character is a bit of a sexist dick -- he sees women mainly as potential sex-partners for one-night stands -- but the author makes him experience consequences for this attitude, and implies that the women in the story have full lives of their own outside of the rather limited main character's view of them.
ohwaitiforgot's review against another edition
4.0
My patience paid off. That said, The Way Inn would have been better if *any* of the action had begun before 40%. I almost stopped reading before it got interesting.
daphne2000's review against another edition
3.0
3.5/3.75 stars
I can't decide if I like Will Wiles's books. There's something about his writing that I absolutely love, but it also comes off as a bit pretentious. He seems to enjoy writing about fairly mundane things, so I guess it's lucky that I enjoy his writing, regardless of how pretentious it is.
This book has been described as a horror book, but I don't understand why. I was never scared. Ever. Maybe I don't scare easily, but I don't think that's the case. Sure, some creepy, possibly even scary, things happen, but it felt more like something you'd see in an action movie, not a horror movie. And all that stuff happened in the last third. The first two thirds of the book were mostly observations on hotels and conferences. So, basically, not much happened. Again, it's lucky that I like his writing style. Otherwise I would have been bored out of my mind.
One thing which I think is important to mention, is the female characters in this book. There were only two, but I can't decide if they were written well or not. They weren't likable at all, but that's not a real problem since none of the male characters were likable either. I think my main issue was that the main character, Neil, didn't see other people as real people. He only saw them as obstacles to go through, and temporary distracted. Consequentially, Neil's interactions with women centered almost solely around sex. Whenever he saw a female, he only thought of what he had to do in order to get in her pants. I guess the sole exception was with Dee, but honestly, a large part of their interactions involved her telling him they were never going to sleep together. I'm still not sure if this is something that should bother me, but I definitely found it a bit off=putting, and it's something you might want to be aware of before you start this.
I'm not unhappy that I read this book, but it was pretty meh. There were parts I loved (like the motel scenes), and it had a great concept, but I felt like it didn't live up to his potential. I wouldn't recommend it, but if the premise interests you, it's worth your time.
I can't decide if I like Will Wiles's books. There's something about his writing that I absolutely love, but it also comes off as a bit pretentious. He seems to enjoy writing about fairly mundane things, so I guess it's lucky that I enjoy his writing, regardless of how pretentious it is.
This book has been described as a horror book, but I don't understand why. I was never scared. Ever. Maybe I don't scare easily, but I don't think that's the case. Sure, some creepy, possibly even scary, things happen, but it felt more like something you'd see in an action movie, not a horror movie. And all that stuff happened in the last third. The first two thirds of the book were mostly observations on hotels and conferences. So, basically, not much happened. Again, it's lucky that I like his writing style. Otherwise I would have been bored out of my mind.
One thing which I think is important to mention, is the female characters in this book. There were only two, but I can't decide if they were written well or not. They weren't likable at all, but that's not a real problem since none of the male characters were likable either. I think my main issue was that the main character, Neil, didn't see other people as real people. He only saw them as obstacles to go through, and temporary distracted. Consequentially, Neil's interactions with women centered almost solely around sex. Whenever he saw a female, he only thought of what he had to do in order to get in her pants. I guess the sole exception was with Dee, but honestly, a large part of their interactions involved her telling him they were never going to sleep together. I'm still not sure if this is something that should bother me, but I definitely found it a bit off=putting, and it's something you might want to be aware of before you start this.
I'm not unhappy that I read this book, but it was pretty meh. There were parts I loved (like the motel scenes), and it had a great concept, but I felt like it didn't live up to his potential. I wouldn't recommend it, but if the premise interests you, it's worth your time.
hobbes199's review against another edition
5.0
Neil Double is a professional conference attender -he’ll do it, so you don’t have to. He’ll attend the seminars, press the flesh, collect the leaflets and other various tat and junk; he’ll even attend the parties and have the meaningless, alcohol-fuelled sex for you. It’s all part of the service his company provides. But it’s at his latest conference, for people who organise conferences (a ‘meta’ conference if you will) that his work is discovered, and the big-wigs don’t like it one little bit. Thus begins Neil’s spiral into chaos, confusion, and disbelief as he realises that the life he considered as safe and reliable due to it’s conformity and monotony was far more complex than he ever imagined.
If you like your novels to be witty, satirical, with fully-realised action scenes and a side-order of mind-bending sci-fi then I urge you to grab this.
Follow the link for full review as well as an interview with the author
http://ifthesebookscouldtalk.com/2015/01/30/the-way-inn/
If you like your novels to be witty, satirical, with fully-realised action scenes and a side-order of mind-bending sci-fi then I urge you to grab this.
Follow the link for full review as well as an interview with the author
http://ifthesebookscouldtalk.com/2015/01/30/the-way-inn/
picaselle's review against another edition
3.0
I've read a few similar books recently - books that were average and not memorable, but somehow they sucked me in. "The Way Inn" was average but I found myself reading it on my way to work and during my short breaks. I read it quite quickly, considering how little time I actually had when I started it.
The first 60% of the novel is actually quite dull. All that happens revolves around conferences. I still can't understand how I went through all these pages of nothing much happening. Even when the plot picks up speed, it goes down a road I know every well; it felt like I read a similar book before. Moreover, I cared very little about the main character, or any of the characters to be honest. Still, I have to give credit to the author. His writing was so good that even though I was reading about things that I had no interest in whatsoever, I did not consider dropping this book even once.
All in all, I would say "The Way Inn" is perfect when you're looking for some light read that's not too long. It won't wow you but it'll provide a nice distraction.
The first 60% of the novel is actually quite dull. All that happens revolves around conferences. I still can't understand how I went through all these pages of nothing much happening. Even when the plot picks up speed, it goes down a road I know every well; it felt like I read a similar book before. Moreover, I cared very little about the main character, or any of the characters to be honest. Still, I have to give credit to the author. His writing was so good that even though I was reading about things that I had no interest in whatsoever, I did not consider dropping this book even once.
All in all, I would say "The Way Inn" is perfect when you're looking for some light read that's not too long. It won't wow you but it'll provide a nice distraction.
scarlettletters's review against another edition
4.0
The description for this says it's [b:Up in the Air|30680|Up in the Air|Walter Kirn|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1388972789s/30680.jpg|1363960] meets Inception; I would add to that late-era [a:David Foster Wallace|4339|David Foster Wallace|https://d.gr-assets.com/authors/1381115424p2/4339.jpg] and a pinch of [a:Franz Kafka|5223|Franz Kafka|https://d.gr-assets.com/authors/1412460277p2/5223.jpg]. It took me longer than usual to read it, but not because it wasn't good. Really I think it's because it wasn't really divided into chapters... I feel like chapter breaks help me read faster.
Anyway, if you like a sort of banal setting with something more sinister beneath the surface, that's what this is. I'm also definitely interested in reading other things Wiles has written.
Anyway, if you like a sort of banal setting with something more sinister beneath the surface, that's what this is. I'm also definitely interested in reading other things Wiles has written.
shimmer's review against another edition
5.0
Will Wiles' first novel, Care of Wooden Floors (2012),* suspended its protagonist in the tragicomic tension of occupying another man's home, so perfectly designed to reflect the personality of its owner (a minimalist composer) that any other person trying to navigate it would be bound — like that protagonist — to chaotic misadventure. Wiles' new novel, The Way Inn , instead takes on a space tailored to no personality, the anonymous hallways and rooms of a corporate chain hotel with locations all over the world, each meant to feel as blandly familiar and welcoming to the corporate road warrior and conference attendee as any other. As those anonymous spaces become imbued with personality, the banal revealing itself to be idiosyncratic and unpredictable, so too The Way Inn becomes a novel between or across genres: the thriller, the haunted house story, the quietly reflective contemporary novel of work.
What intrigues me most is the complicating ambiguity the novel brings by way of these genre elements. Most thrillers, at least in my experience, reach a point of moral clarity — the good vs. the bad — and stories of threatening places ultimately negate the appeal of that place. The Way Inn, however, is honest about the pleasures of such anonymous spaces, that their disorientation can in fact be reorienting, like the shower in protagonist Neil Double's hotel room:
This stripping away, of experience, of accrued quotidian "filth," and of complication is akin to a past job Double recounts, in which he was responsible for finding cheaper replacements for the high-end building materials clients had actually contracted for, to produce husk versions of the buildings they actually wanted. It's cynical, and destructive, but there's also something appealing about reduction to a banal minimum — perhaps it's a dark way of achieving the simplicity and "presence" Peter Zumthor has championed in architecture.
It's that acknowledgment of the appeal, even as characters struggle against its source (and I'm trying not to give away much of the story unnecessarily) that most engaged me in The Way Inn, both intellectually and through the excitement of its increasingly action-oriented plot. There's a sense here of the thriller as a "proto-genre," something all-accessible and infinitely variable as a hotel space, like a field Double discovers near his hotel in which nothing grows, and where it seems nothing ever has grown or ever will grow, only layers of ahistorical nothing marking a quintessential opposite to natural landscapes (think, in contrast, of the rich layers of local knowledge and history and change over time pulled out of a "mere" field in a novel like Jim Crace's Harvest).
These spaces of Wiles' are horrifying, and cautionary, and yet… and yet they are also deeply appealing, as reader and protagonist are forced to acknowledge together. They are escapism incarnate, these spaces in which we might briefly become a stripped down, simplified version of ourselves — or not so briefly, if the appeal is so great or the career so all-encompassing we come to spend our lives in these spaces. Just as a reader prone to dismissing "less literary" genres like the escapist thriller or haunted house story — and less "significant" spaces like the conference hotel — might come to realize they can be richly complex, as complex and contradictory as our desires to step outside ourselves at times to feel like ourselves more fully.
* As disclosure, I reviewed Care of Wooden Floors for Ploughshares, and have since become friendly with Will Wiles, so these comments should be read in that light — I wouldn't review his new book more formally than on my own blog or here at Goodreads.
What intrigues me most is the complicating ambiguity the novel brings by way of these genre elements. Most thrillers, at least in my experience, reach a point of moral clarity — the good vs. the bad — and stories of threatening places ultimately negate the appeal of that place. The Way Inn, however, is honest about the pleasures of such anonymous spaces, that their disorientation can in fact be reorienting, like the shower in protagonist Neil Double's hotel room:
Every day the whole shower is reset by invisible staff, as if you had never been in it. In your shower at home, your repeated visits will eventually accumulate, and you must continually clean the unit. This, more than the dribbling water or the Swiss watchmaker precision needed to set the temperature between glacial and scalding, is the true disappointment of the home shower: you are constantly encountering yourself.
This stripping away, of experience, of accrued quotidian "filth," and of complication is akin to a past job Double recounts, in which he was responsible for finding cheaper replacements for the high-end building materials clients had actually contracted for, to produce husk versions of the buildings they actually wanted. It's cynical, and destructive, but there's also something appealing about reduction to a banal minimum — perhaps it's a dark way of achieving the simplicity and "presence" Peter Zumthor has championed in architecture.
It's that acknowledgment of the appeal, even as characters struggle against its source (and I'm trying not to give away much of the story unnecessarily) that most engaged me in The Way Inn, both intellectually and through the excitement of its increasingly action-oriented plot. There's a sense here of the thriller as a "proto-genre," something all-accessible and infinitely variable as a hotel space, like a field Double discovers near his hotel in which nothing grows, and where it seems nothing ever has grown or ever will grow, only layers of ahistorical nothing marking a quintessential opposite to natural landscapes (think, in contrast, of the rich layers of local knowledge and history and change over time pulled out of a "mere" field in a novel like Jim Crace's Harvest).
These spaces of Wiles' are horrifying, and cautionary, and yet… and yet they are also deeply appealing, as reader and protagonist are forced to acknowledge together. They are escapism incarnate, these spaces in which we might briefly become a stripped down, simplified version of ourselves — or not so briefly, if the appeal is so great or the career so all-encompassing we come to spend our lives in these spaces. Just as a reader prone to dismissing "less literary" genres like the escapist thriller or haunted house story — and less "significant" spaces like the conference hotel — might come to realize they can be richly complex, as complex and contradictory as our desires to step outside ourselves at times to feel like ourselves more fully.
* As disclosure, I reviewed Care of Wooden Floors for Ploughshares, and have since become friendly with Will Wiles, so these comments should be read in that light — I wouldn't review his new book more formally than on my own blog or here at Goodreads.