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Fiction
Title: Motel of the Stars Author: Karen Salyer McElmurray Read About this Author. Rating:  Must Read!
Publisher: Sarabande Books Web Page: www.sarabandebooks.org Reviewed by: Eric Jones |
 
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I was fortunate enough to pick up my copy of 'Motel of the Stars' at AWP in Chicago and have it signed by the author herself and spent the next couple of weeks reading it in pieces, too haunted by its sadness to give it the 'straight through'. This is a book that begs to be read slowly. Like the bottomless well of Iron Butterfly's eleven minute version of 'Inagaddadavida', it works best when you allow yourself to flow with its mood rather than eating it all at once, radio-edit style. McElmurray's wordplay takes complete advantage of its melodious tone, weaving it throughout the story's plot line, traveling in and out of time and space as Jason Sanderson and Lory Llewellyn both struggle with the death of a mutual loved one. The author uses definitions to introduce each chapter, evoking a sense of astronomy with words like 'black hole' and 'vortex'. These words become the knot in the author's thread, anchoring both characters drawn by their memories of Sam Sanderson's life to the celebration of the Harmonic Convergence, and the inevitable converging of their separate lives. In 'Motel of the Stars', author Karen McElmurray creates a ghost story made all the more eerie by its absence of the supernatural. Although there is a supernatural aura about memories becoming so much more potent, to a point of debilitating its central characters, as the day of the planets alignment draws nearer, this is not the author's focus and she wisely leaves out any supernatural context. Rather, like a Flannery O'Connor story, fantastic elements are replaced by real world messengers. Micky, for instance, is a child who may or may not be the nephew of a woman that loans a room to Sanderson for the night. He stands in a room full of discarded baby dolls and admits that he wants nothing more than to leave his benefactress, Goldie. We get the sense that Micky is one of Goldie's dolls, missing pieces and partially abandoned by her, even though she has all intentions of “fixing them up, one at a time, some of these days.” This is one of McElmurray's frequent dreamlike realities (or reality-like dreams) and is mirrored by Jason's own frequent memories of his own son who has been dead for ten years and who he has still refused to let go of, even after it leads to a split with his current wife, Rosa. 'Motel of the Stars' is filled with these kinds of living ghosts, each one cascading perfectly into the next until the colliding of worlds at the end.
One can make arguments for the role that destiny plays in
the story, but the author avoids taking any concrete
position in favor of allowing the reader to drift in and out
of the question. The worlds of Lory and Jason echo this
sentiment; Jason is grounded in the reality of his
occupation, wife, and home while Lory remains caught in the
dream world, trapped in her hotel room for a decade after
her lover's passing. Sam is the only link between them, and
he remains an ever changing memory.
The result is a staggering view, like fireworks in
slow-motion, of how these two unstable worlds slowly move
into alignment through both the chance movement of the
cosmos and the particular choices that each character makes.
'Motel of the Stars' is as grand in scope as it is
intricately delicate, and floats between rift after rift
after rift like ripples on water, sparks from a radial saw,
or the eternal expansion of the universe.
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