The Way Inn
by Will Wiles
‘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...has a magnificent sense of comic timing but also a handy way with sudden violence. 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
"I devoured this impressive and enthralling novel. If you ever explored hotel corridors or played in hotel lifts as a child, be glad it wasn't in this hotel." - Alison Moore
"An ingenious and smartly funny novel." - The Daily Mail
"Let’s start with some hyperbole: THE WAY INN is the first Gothic novel of the junior executive suite. The first loyalty-programme based horror story. The first literary work in which composite laminates are a central plot device. But if that’s not enough for you, read on." - The Architectural Review
"THE WAY INN is a subtle and beautifully crafted tragicomic thought experiment that leads us to rethink our relationships with commerce, the built environment and the work we do. It’s also a hilarious satire with elements reminiscent of JG Ballard’s disaster novels and the philosophical horror of Thomas Ligotti." - Morning Star
"Utterly wonderful." - J. Robert Lennon, author of MAILMAN
"THE WAY INN is funny, clever and thrilling, its central conceit disturbing enough to demand that you read it outside, if you can." - The Guardian
"I loved THE WAY INN, [which] strikes me as the first authentically post-Ballardian vision of the world as it has become and as it is going to continue to be…Will Wiles is a mature, expert and wonderfully original talent." - Christopher Priest, author of The Prestige
"Wonderfully original and bitingly funny…the finest social comedy…In the hierarchy of dystopian novels, THE WAY INN is special because it accurately describes the dystopia we are already living in. It is a stunningly good read." - Strange Horizons
"An ingenious and smartly funny novel." - Daily Mail
Other Books by Will Wiles
