If McMurtry, Johnson, McGuane and Carver need a fifth to make up a literary five-a-side team, they need look no further than Willy Vlautin. The Motel Life is about the moving acceptance of life as bad luck, heartbreak, and a consistently thwarted but resolutely unkillable hope. Redemption comes through story-telling, and this is a tale told in a beautiful tone of deadpan wonder. Niall Griffiths, author of Grits and Wreckage