Motel Girl

"Greg Sanders has hit the bullseye with Motel Girl. The stories—original, often surreal, yet thoroughly convincing—are tone-perfect, exuding a marvelous, full-bodied authority. An astonishingly fine debut."
—Janet Fitch, author of Paint It Black and White Oleander

"Greg Sanders's stories are ingenious and original—but more important, he's a fabulist with a heart."
—Da

"Greg Sanders has hit the bullseye with Motel Girl. The stories—original, often surreal, yet thoroughly convincing—are tone-perfect, exuding a marvelous, full-bodied authority. An astonishingly fine debut."
—Janet Fitch, author of Paint It Black and White Oleander

"Greg Sanders's stories are ingenious and original—but more important, he's a fabulist with a heart."
—David Gates, Pulitzer Prize finalist and author of The Wonders of the Invisible World, Jernigan and Preston Falls

"Realistic absurdity ties together the short stories of Sanders's intelligent and funny collection....Skillfully narrated and concisely written, this collection of short stories is at once comical, cringe-worthy, relevant and weird."
—Publishers Weekly

"There is a kind of violence in every story, different kinds; and it is always surprising how the physical violence is the least disturbing kind."
—The Los Angeles Times

"Greg Sanders’s prose will make you wake up and smell the latté...Whether dramatic or meditative, these stories are deft, enigmatic lyrics that pivot on an image or insight."
—Rain Taxi Review of Books

See more reviews.

From the back cover: These stories take the reader on journeys realist and absurd, meta-fictional and post-modern. MotelGirl is peopled by the colorful, the transcendent, the sane and insane—by egoists, self-deprecators, demons and drunks, by the well-meaning, and by monsters. From a Muscovite torn between the affections of her live-in bear and her boyfriend to a corporate bureaucrat who discovers the secret to immortality in a decrepit art museum, from a vengeful adolescent motel clerk to a legal proofreader poisoned on a subway platform, these short stories play by rules that might seem unorthodox to some, refreshing to others. This collection is proof that the form is alive and well—and breaking new ground—in the first decade of the 21st century.

Motel Girl amounts to an exploration of the contemporary laws of romance, longing and sex, of how the computerized, branded universe is now fully integrated into the fabric of our thought and behavior. Join in the journey, a frenetic and disarming joy ride. Taken as a whole, these stories create a new paradigm for the American short story, an expansion in narrative reach, creative power, and experimentation.