Room service

173 pages

English language

Published Oct. 17, 1987 by Penguin Books.

ISBN:
978-0-14-010198-0
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2 stars (1 review)

Moorhouse and his alter-ego, Francois Blase, like to travel light. Carrying a typewriter, a six-pack and a healthy amount of hedonistic humor, the Australian pair tour the globe's underbelly in these brilliant pieces, exchanging barbs, witticisms and stinging insights on the ways of people. The tales dissect the anti-art of traveling and provide incisive narratives that alternately wink at their subjects and then "whonk" them on the backAussie style. The tour includes Hiltonia (Hilton chains, commonly called "Tip Town"), the Land of the Laundromats (where laundry is a "metaphorical shedding of skins") or Autobahnia (national freeways that "suggest nationality"). In particular, the author pokes fun at Australians and their penal-colony past. With these humor stories, Moorhouse proves his skill as a master of satire.

2 editions

Review of 'Room service' on 'Goodreads'

2 stars

Liked the first third. It was a lot like the previous book I read of his, Lateshows. I like his letters to his editor, reporting on his obsession with Hilton hotels, his paranoia about the bell captain, and seeming dislike of travel in general (he is a travel writer).

The other two thirds of the stories kind of lost me, got a bit bored and scanned over a lot of them, the stuff that wasn't about travel but just general fiction.

Subjects

  • Humorous stories, Australian.
  • Australia -- Social life and customs -- Fiction.