The Way Inn
SHORTLISTED FOR THE ENCORE AWARD
SHORTLISTED FOR THE KITSCHIES
‘The Way Inn’ takes the polished surfaces of modern life, the branded coffee and the free wifi, and twists them into a nightmare.
The Way Inn is a global chain of identikit mid-budget hotels, and Neil Double is a valued member of its loyalty scheme. Neil is a professional conference-goer, a man who will attend trade fairs, expos and conventions so you don’t have to. This life of anonymised, budget travel would be hell for most, but it’s a kind of paradise for Neil, who has turned his incognito professional life into a toxic personal philosophy.
But Neil is about to change. In a brand new Way Inn in an airport hinterland, he meets a woman – a woman he has seen before in bizarre and unsettling circumstances. She hints at being in possession of an astonishing truth about this mundane world. And then she disappears. Fascinated, and with his professional life unravelling, Neil tries to find the woman again. In doing so he is drawn into the appalling secret that lurks behind the fake smiles and muzak of the hotel…
”'Wiles, a design and architecture journalist, has a magnificent sense of comic timing but also a handy way with sudden violence. As Double'slife begins to unravel under the weight of new revelations, even a clock radio seems to develop an ominous consciousness … 'The Way Inn' is Terence Conran meets HP Lovecraft. It is Bulgakov staged in the Tate, Kafka as a new Ikea furniture range. Wiles writes beautiful prose, stages exquisitely painful set-piece scenes of high comedy, and in Neil Double has created a John Self for the Marriott generation. 'The Way Inn' is funny, clever and thrilling, its central conceit disturbing enough to demand that you read it outside, if you can.” - Lloyd Shepherd, Guardian
”'Chilling … The twisted novelty of the central idea is neat and memorable.” - Sunday Times
”'An ingenious and smartly funny novel” - Harry Ritchie, Daily Mail
”'A follow-up to last year’s 'Care Of Wooden Floors', taking a simple premise - a businessman staying in a chain of bland hotels - and horrifyingly turning it on its head. It’ll make your skin crawl” - Shortlist
Praise for ‘Care of Wooden Floors’: -
”'Funny and richly poetic…a surreal, farcical, original first novel” - The Times Books of the Year
‘A very funny novel combining schadenfreude and belly laughs. Independent -
”'A terrific first novel, written with a very engaging deadpan wit, and an understated sense of the absurd.” - Kate Saunders, The Times
‘Ingenious … his story has something in common, in terms of manic sensitivity, with Edgar Allan Poes’ The Tell-Tale Heart…[with] deft and precise descriptive asides. This is a smart and polished debut.’ Daily Telegraph -
”'This novel acquires the queasy allure of a cliff edge, the sense of impending catastrophe becoming strangely compelling … Addictive and rather clever, too.” - Daily Mail
”'Funny, beguiling and quietly profound; a wonderfully well-crafted debut.” - TLS