Travelers Rest: A Novel by Keith Lee Morris (Epub)

Description

The Addisons — Julia and Tonio, ten-year-old Dewey, and derelict Uncle Robbie — are driving home, cross-country, after collecting Robbie from yet another trip to rehab. When a terrifying blizzard strikes outside the town of Good Night, Idaho, they seek refuge in the town at the Travelers Rest, a formerly opulent but now crumbling and eerie hotel where the physical laws of the universe are bent.

Once inside the hotel, the family is separated. As Julia and Tonio drift through the maze of the hotel’s spectral interiors, struggling to make sense of the building’s alluring powers, Dewey ventures outward to a secret-filled diner across the street. Meanwhile, a desperate Robbie quickly succumbs to his old vices, drifting ever further from the ones who love him most.

With each passing hour, dreams and memories blur, tearing a hole in the fabric of our perceived reality and leaving the Addisons in a ceaseless search for one another. At each turn a mysterious force prevents them from reuniting, until at last Julia is faced with an impossible choice.

Can this mother save her family from the fate of becoming Souvenirs — those citizens trapped forever in magnetic Good Night — or, worse, from disappearing entirely? With the fearsome intensity of a ghost story, the magical spark of a fairy tale, and the emotional depth of the finest family sagas, Keith Lee Morris takes us on a journey beyond the realm of the known. Featuring prose as dizzyingly beautiful as the mystical world Morris creates, Travelers Rest is both a mind-altering meditation on the nature of consciousness and a heartbreaking story of a family on the brink of survival.

User’s Reviews

Review “Beautifully written. Morris has an adroit hand for characterization and atmosphere; the people feel real….and the haunting isolation of Good Night looms and chills throughout the story.”―N.K. Jemisin, New York Times Book Review”Thoughtful, engaging, and clearly the work of a writer who knows what he’s doing….Morris’s prose is very good–polished, accessible, and at times quirkily humorous….There’s much to admire and enjoy in Travelers Rest. The writing is persuasive, the characters are rich, and there are moments of great emotional resonance. Should you choose to stay a while in Good Night, Idaho, then–unlike the Addisons–you won’t regret it.”―Michael Marshall Smith, The Guardian”Travelers Rest does not go in for Gothic horror shocks, presenting instead a subtle, meticulous examination of strained relationships, the effects of isolation on the mind, and the persistent hold memory has over us….The novel resembles the kind of nightmare you can’t seem to wake from….It exerts a powerful hold.”―James Lovegrove, Financial Times”Morris’s third novel is just as rewarding as his short stories, brimming as it is with ghosts, dream mines, and snowy mazes…In his artful hands, the fallible and relatable characters make for good company in the punchy cabin-fever atmosphere.”―Courtney Ferguson, Portland Mercury”It says much of Morris’s skill that he’s able to keep us bewitched and beguiled in this topsy-turvy world with its endless corridors, twisting stairs, and Escher-like surroundings. The novel culminates in an almost operatic grand finale where past and present meet in a satisfying conclusion.” ―John Clarke, The Independent”Time and space are as fluid as water in Keith Lee Morris’s labyrinthine third novel…Proustian in theme but not in form, Travelers Rest is the definition of dreamlike prose. Morris’s writing is clean and cold as snow. The pages drift by just as effortlessly, lulling you into a quiet cocoon that you realize, too late, is actually something much more sinister.”―Adam Morgan, BookPage”It won’t take long–a page, maybe two–before you feel wondrously disquieted by Keith Lee Morris’s Travelers Rest. The novel traps its characters in the town of Good Night, Idaho, and the reader in its shaken snow globe of a world. The language dazzles and the circumstances chill and put this story in the good company of Stephen King’s The Shining, Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House, and David Lynch’s Twin Peaks. This is a breakout book that will earn Morris the wide readership he richly deserves.”―Benjamin Percy, author of The Dead Lands and Red Moon”Echoing the fantastic work of Shirley Jackson and Stephen King, Travelers Rest is both fiercely gripping and deeply unsettling, a perfect mixture of horror and fairy tale held together by Keith Lee Morris’s unique ability to look beyond the imposing hotel and take us inside the hearts and minds of this trapped family, a feat that makes this story all the more frightening and moving. This is a novel that pulls you in immediately and refuses to let you go.”―Kevin Wilson, author of the New York Times bestseller The Family Fang”Keith Lee Morris knows what fiction is made for: in Travelers Rest he creates an intriguing world, poses big questions, and gives us sentences that by themselves are worth the read. What happens, he asks, when the person who goes missing is yourself? And you’re lost not only in space, but also in time. And the people you love most are counting on you to save them because they are missing, too. Morris invites us to lose ourselves in his stunning new novel and find out.”―Charlotte Rogan, author of the New York Times bestseller The Lifeboat”Expertly refurbishing an old structure, this haunted-hotel novel generates some genuine chills . . . Morris handles the spooky materials deftly, but his writing is what makes the story really scary: quiet and languorous, sweeping steadily and inexorably along like a curtain of drifting snow identified too late as an avalanche.”―Publishers Weekly (Starred Review) –This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition.

Reviews from Amazon users, collected at the time the book is getting published on UniedVRG. It can be related to shiping or paper quality instead of the book content:

⭐ This novel has a promising premise, but ultimately fails to deliver. Taking Proust’s Remembrance of Things Past as its epigram, the story attempts to illustrate Faulkner’s famous quote, “The past is never dead. It’s not even past.” Each character confronts an earlier version of him- or herself, remembering a key moment of selfhood in which they clearly identified themselves as separate from their parents and the forces controlling their everyday lives. All of this happens over the course of several days in which a family is stranded in an Idaho ghost town as a snowstorm rages and they are unable to locate one another. Magical realism abounds, but more as a plot device to keep the characters separate and to provide a bit of suspense in a tale that woefully needs it.The characters — a married couple, the husband’s younger brother, and their 10-year-old son — are sympathetic enough, but we know almost nothing of them in real life, before they arrive at the time-bending hotel (which prompts inevitable comparisons to The Shining, by the way; what was Morris’s editor thinking, letting this stand?!). Their memories should fill us in, but they don’t, because we never see the characters really interact. And there is a sameness about them that is deadening: they are all reactive, quiet, laid-back in the extreme. The wife, Julia, is supposed to be the heart of the story, but she has not been imagined well enough to do more than feel hungry and think about her life in terms of the others who have shaped it (her mother, her husband, her brother-in-law). This could be a powerful statement about how poorly realized her consciousness is, except that the male characters are sort of shallow, too — and it’s clear that there is supposed to be much more to Julia. We just can’t see it at all.Point of view is a huge issue in this novel. Julia is the main character, according to the plot, but her husband Tonio is clearly the author’s voice. He is much better developed, with thoughts and opinions and ideas beyond the immediate needs of the moment. Robbie, Tonio’s screw-up of a brother, is defined entirely in terms of his need for alcohol, drugs, sex, and avoidance of all responsibility. He is narrated gingerly, almost apologetically, as if to avoid hurting his feelings. And Dewey, the 10-year-old, is described with a mishmash of language and information that sometimes makes him seem 6 years old (could a 10-year-old basketball whiz really be so small that his father has to lift him up so he can ding the bell on a hotel counter?!) and other times an adult, indistinguishable from his father. When Dewey is the focus of the narration, the style veers from slangy to elevated. He is referred to in the third person as The Dooze Man, he seeks “tasty beverages” and needs help zipping up his jacket, yet this 10-year-old also thinks in these terms: But now it was the next day and they still weren’t here, no Dad, no Mom, no Uncle Robbie . . . Not many things were unique — it was an even more restricted category than “special,” which was a word his dad also used a lot, and which was related to the scientific word “species,” but which in everyday usage meant something that gave something a specific or particular designation apart from other less distinct designations.Dewey is described as brilliant, with an IQ “off the charts,” but he doesn’t spend much time thinking. Nor does this superior athlete ever move beyond walking to and from the diner to the hotel, or engage in any sport beyond jacks on the floor of the lobby. He is barely there, beyond his hunger, cold, and concern for his family.Travellers Rest needs a strong motivating plot, because the characters’ inner lives aren’t compelling enough to sustain it. The magical realism needs a driving force, an absolute compelling reason for its existence. Morris’s earlier novels, particularly the excellent Dart League King, gain their momentum from interesting action and a sense of urgency. I suspect that Travellers Rest is a novel Morris really believes in — certainly, it is a bit of a departure from much of his previous work. But I prefer his story-driven narratives. Morris is always worth reading, and I’m looking forward to seeing what comes next.

⭐ I could not finish this novel. The writing wasn’t interesting enough to make me want to get to know the characters. I’m sorry, but I found what I did get through to be very boring and repetitive.

⭐ Weird for weirdness sake.

⭐ A perfect book to curl up with on a snowy day! Beautifully written and haunting, steeped in atmosphere!

⭐ “Traveler’s Rest” is NOT intended to be a full throttle horror novel. FOR THE LOVE OF WHATEVER YOU BELIEVE IN, STOP COMPARING IT TO THAT GENRE, specifically Stephen King’s “The Shining.” (more on that later). With that said…it’s okay to view the novel within that genre, but only partially. “Traveler’s Rest” is intended to be LITERARY in nature (heck, there’s a reason why Keith holds a Masters in English AND an MFA from the oldest creative writing program in the country).To the novel itself: I’m not going to mention the plot. It seems that every review here has done so. As stated, a lot of readers are comparing the plot to “The Shining.” “The Shining” is only similar to this novel for the location, weather conditions, and coincidental references, such as a room number and a ballroom. So really? I should view the novel completely under the lens of a Stephen King book? Nonsense. Just because he wrote about a hotel and a family isolated doesn’t give him the right to monopolize the setting. This book goes much, much beyond King’s work, and here’s how…The setting and weather, they’re not gimmicks. The weather and setting are CHARACTERS. They are ALWAYS present, ALWAYS influencing reality. Does the “The Shining” do such? Perhaps, but no where near as advanced as this novel. This novel is philosophical in nature, and it uses the elements of weather, the interior design of the inn, etc. to continually emphasize the immediacy of the situation of the family and the nature of whom they – and by extension – we are. Granted, unaware readers may hope that the snow forms devils and attacks with snow axes. But we’re not dealing with this concept. Bank on it: if you approach the novel from the perspective of reading a philosophical journey, then you are own your way. If you like the ghoulish twist, you’ll get it, but ultimately this is about character development – how do we become whom we are?Most importantly, by the end of the novel, I was asking those questions to myself, not being TOLD the answers by the author. Keith has left us to interpret our own self as a result of reading the all-encompassing personalities of these characters. We have to make reflections about our own life after we read the book, and the scene for me was when the father and son are walking together…read it and you’ll find out.So, please, for your own benefit, approach this novel as a literary novel. If not, go to Maine and find King and tell him to write you a book in a week. Ask him to write “The Shining 2.” The first one sucked. (Not the Kubrick masterpiece, however)I cared about the characters. The writing is impeccable. The philosophy rests on the shoulders of the existentialist greats (novels rarely approach these concepts anymore), yet Keith approaches it from an original angle.This is a breakout work.

⭐ powerful and effective. Unsettling and rich.

⭐ Too cloudy

⭐ THIS WAS A BORING READ. I READ IT FOR A BOOK CLUB SO I SLUGGED THRU, BUT IT WAS PAINFUL. IN THE END IT WAS UNFULFILLED SINCE CHARACTER WAS SO TEMPTED TO GO BACK– FOR WHAT AND WHY??? THE STORY WAS A CIRCLE OF HOPELESSNESS. I VERY RARELY DO NOT FINISH A BOOK, BUT NOT FOR CLUB I WOULD HAVE LEFT THIS ONE UNFINISHED.

⭐ The book starts off so similar to “The Shining” by Stephen King – snow storm, spooky hotel, unstable main character. There’s the married couple, Julia and Tonio Addison, their 10-year-old son, Dewey, and Tonio’s brother, Robbie, an addict recently released from rehab. On their way home after picking up Robbie, they decide to stop at the town of Good Night, Idaho and stay the night at the hotel, Travelers Rest.The four of them become separated and as they wandered the endless halls and tunnels of the hotel, at times their minds became numb and trancelike. I have to say that at times during the first half of the book, my mind also became numb and trancelike and I felt that parts went on for too long. But each time I would start to get a bit bored with the wandering, something would happen to spike my interest. Once the book starts going back in time and you start to see the correlation between the past and the present, it becomes much more interesting again.The author does know how to create compelling characters and how to pull you into the story. He’s created a very unique world and casts a thought provoking light on perception and consciousness. It’s a very slow-moving eerie story and also quite a sad one, as these generations of people try to break the pull this town has on them.I won this book in a Goodreads giveaway and am under no obligation to give a review.

⭐ Tonio and Julia Addison are driving across country, accompanied by their ten year old son, Dewey, and Tonio’s neer-do-well brother, Robbie. Caught in a snowstorm, they take refuge in a small mining town called Good Night which has a hotel, called The Traveller’s Rest. From the start, things seem strange – the hotel has no heating, seemingly no food and little in the way of staff. However, Julia is immediately drawn to it and is adamant they should stay. With the snow piling up and a diner and bar in reasonable proximity, the others agree despite their misgivings.Gradually, we begin to learn of the relationships between this family. Julia’s attraction to Robbie, who has just left a rehabilitation programme and the various interplay between them. True to character, it is not long before Robbie decides to help himself with some cash from Tonio’s wallet and find the local bar and, before long, the family members find themselves separated and wandering in what evolves into a dreamscape of a book where the past is bleeding into the present.Quotes from Proust are used at the beginnings of chapters and this novel does have that same, meandering quality. Despite this book being described as similar to Shirley Jackson or Stephen King (there are obvious comparisons with “The Shining”), I did not find this had either the horror factor of King or the characters which make Jackson’s books so deeply satisfying. Indeed, I found it difficult to really connect with these characters or feel any particular sense of concern about their circumstances.This was not a bad book, but it failed to grip me. The ending brought everything together satisfactorily, but for much of it, I felt rather like the characters – groping around in the dark for some kind of plot or structure to make sense of the storyline. Lastly, I received a copy of this book from the publisher, via NetGalley, for review.

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