Niagara Motel

by Ashley Little

Overview

Set in the early 1990s, Ashley Little’s follow-up to her award-winning novel Anatomy of a Girl Gang introduces readers to eleven-year-old Tucker Malone—the only child of a narcoleptic touring stripper—who believes his father is Sam Malone, the Boston barkeep who regularly appears on Tucker’s TV screen. He and his mother move from motel to motel until, one night in Niagara Falls, his mother is hit by a car after falling asleep in the street.

Tucker is sent to live in a youth group home where he meets Meredith, a pregnant sixteen-year-old with hopes of her own; he convinces her to join him on a road trip across the border to America in order to find his father, which takes them from Boston to the west coast. Along the way they encounter some of the most notorious criminals of the 1990s, and arrive in Los Angeles just as the Rodney King riots are unfolding.

His cross-country search becomes an epic depiction of mid-90s America at a crossroads as seen through the eyes of a boy, for whom finding his father is the one thing that will make him whole. Told in spare, straightforward prose, Niagara Motel is a biting chronicle during the rise of mass-media in the decade that defined the MTV Generation, and the bittersweet story of a young boy who must learn hard lessons on his way to becoming a man.

Ashley Little is the author of Anatomy of a Girl Gang, winner of the Ethel Wilson Fiction Prize and longlisted for the Dublin IMPAC Literary Award.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781551526607
Publisher:	Arsenal Pulp Press, Limited
Publication date:	11/01/2016
Pages:	296
Product dimensions:	5.90(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.80(d)

About the Author

Ashley Little: Ashley Little is the author of Anatomy of a Girl Gang, winner of the Ethel Wilson Fiction Prize and longlisted for the IMPAC Dublin Literary Award, and The New Normal, a YA novel that won the Sheila Egoff Children’s Literature Award.

Editorial Reviews

"Sharp, sly, and full of feeling. Catcher in the Rye crashes into the 1990s. A voice and a story you won't be able to shake." —Alix Hawley, author of All True Not a Lie in It

"Tucker's a charmer from the get-go—funny and wise and knowing and clueless—the best companion you could have on this road trip across the early 90s, where the real and the outlandish blur and commingle. Like summer blacktop, like a desert mirage, Niagara Motel shimmers." —Anne Fleming, author of Gay Dwarves of America

From the Publisher

Sept. 7, 2016
A Canadian preteen with a deeply unreliable mother hits the road with a fellow runaway amid the chaos of Rodney King–era America.Award-winning young-adult novelist Little (Anatomy of a Girl Gang, 2014, etc.) spins a bleak tale of wayward youth in this throwback novel set in the grunge era. Eleven-year-old Tucker Malone is a scrappy kid whose mother, Gina, is a stripper/escort and a narcoleptic with a dangerous habit of dropping asleep at any moment. After they make their way to Niagara Falls, Gina has an episode and is struck by a car and severely injured. Tucker is exiled to Bright Light, a group home for troubled teens. His only friend there is Meredith, a pregnant teen escort. “We were a strange match as far as friends go, but magnets don’t need to understand how magnetism works; they just repel each other or stick together,” Tucker tells us. But it’s a dark time. Meredith quickly finds out she’s too far along for an abortion, and Tucker witnesses a fatal stabbing. While all this is going on—and for pretty much no reason at all—Tucker is convinced that his father is the character Sam Malone from the sitcom Cheers. So he and Meredith run away in a stolen car looking for his father. What follows is a cross-country drama during which Tucker and Meredith encounter the best and worst that America has to offer. After a disappointing excursion to Boston to visit the real-life counterpart of the Cheers pub, the unlikely duo make their way to Los Angeles by hitchhiking, traveling with a gun nut, a drag queen, and other motley characters. The book culminates with Tucker and Meredith entrenched in the 1992 Los Angeles riots. Suffice it to say that something terrible happens. A very readable if dismal roadside adventure that could have some appeal for Gen X readers or youngsters exploring a pre-digital era.

Kirkus Review