The Lord's Motel: A Novel

There are a couple of reasons I'm probably somewhat biased towards this book. From what I recall, the author is a professor at the University of Houston, my alma mater. Second? As a young twenty-something woman, I lived in an apartment complex near the Montrose area of Houston, populated with the same sorts of curious characters who live in The Lord's Motel. When I finished this book I was struck with the sense of, "This could have been written about me!" Similarities aside, that to me represents the mark of a great read.Colleen is the Texas girls' Bridget Jones, constantly debating involvement with a man who is scum, seeking to improve herself all the while combating fierce insecurity and some self-loathing. What makes Colleen even more endearing as a character is her want to handle herself well in any situation- whether it's professional improvement through her creation of a book delivery program, or trying to be patient while a wonderful man heals his heart. She isn't whiny, she isn't stupid and she doesn't wander through life interested only in herself. Definitely an easy read for an afternoon by the pool or those days where you want to leap from the top of your office building.

"Is it better to have fun with a kinky man or to be gloomy with a good one?" So begins Gail Donohue Storey's smart, witty and sometimes sensual tale of one woman's search for love and personal growth. The story is narrated by the engaging and endearing Colleen, the principal protagonist, who functions in a chronic state of analytical overload. Indeed, her search for answers is continually impeded by her propensity to keep manufacturing more questions. Colleen is a librarian; bright, thoughtful, and kind. But her self-created world of palpable excess and her personal baggage take their toll in her decision-making processes. The result is a story that grabs the reader from the first sentence and never lets him or her go. The characters are brilliantly created and unforgettable. Perhaps most compelling, though, is Storey's gift for turning a clever phrase in describing Colleen's existential angst. It makes the dialogue some of the most entertaining that I have ever seen in a novel. Casual readers will love the story; voracious ones will marvel at the artfulness of the text; and writers, such as I, will just wish that they could write like Gail Donohue Storey. This book is a winner. It's "Sex in the City" with an actual point.

Colleen is a trip. She pulls you into her very being from the first paragraph. Writing in the first person, Colleen (Storey)makes you feel instant and present intimacy with her quirky, fun world. Her take on people and life are worth the read.

Gail Donohue Storey's The Lord's Motel deals with the scattered life of Colleen Sweeney, and her struggle to retain sanity in the face of an aimlessness and co-dependency that has left her perilously close to emotional disaster.Colleen works in a library, and demonstrates enough initiative to create a prison book delivery program, despite substantial administrative resistance. She calls it Service to the Unserved.But not everything about Colleen's life is so well orchestrated. Personally, she is far from together. She is right at home in her small, somewhat seedy apartment complex with its collection of tenants in varying degrees of mental stability. These neighbors (including a New Age pseudo-prophet named St. Francis, who manages the place) are Colleen's surrogate family, and they provide a number of wise and comic moments in the book.Colleen also has an unhealthy attachment to a man of questionable character, whose manipulation and sexual deviance she would rather endure than risk the terror of being alone.Everything about Colleen suggests both kindness and desperation. She is at once playful and panicked. Storey's use of first person narration is appropriate to her character's impulsiveness and unwitting flirtation with the darker side of life. We see events unfold as Colleen does, but with greater perspective (Ever noticed it's always easier to spot the horrors in someone else's life?).Dialogue and imagery are both fresh. The tone of the book is light, but to dismiss it as quirk is to miss the point entirely. There are serious issues at work. Colleen's cute-speak is a happy mask, designed to disguise despair. One gets the sense that if for one second Colleen stopped smiling, her face would crack like poorly treated porcelain.Perhaps Service to the Unserved is a metaphor for Colleen's precarious plight, and by extension the rest of us. I liked Colleen. I found her to be in most ways normal, which is frightening. But maybe the real fright is that so many of us are, at some point in our lives, a single thread away from losing it. On the other hand, maybe we're all just walking around in need of a little Service.Reading The Lord's Motel might do the trick.