Enjoy Your Stay at the Shamrock Motel

Kaufman (All My Friends Are Superheroes) serves up a funny novel in stories about a strange motel. The opener, “Fifteen All True Facts About the Shamrock Motel,” is a list of the establishment’s unique qualities, among them: “You don’t find the Shamrock Motel. The Shamrock Motel finds you.” In “Pick Me,” a man named Derek Wilson is feeling abandoned by his workaholic wife, May, when he stumbles on the motel. He checks into a room and begins masturbating to memories of past girlfriends, but takes a break to call and invite May to join him in the room. “If the Bear Makes You Happy” depicts divorcée Bonnie and her trysts with a bear at the motel, which make her “feel like a risk-taker, the kind of woman she imagined she’d be if she hadn’t spent so long in a loveless marriage.” Illicit sex also features in “Burt Reynolds,” about a guest named George who hires sex worker Peggy to join him at the motel. While George is getting pegged by Peggy, he enters a portal to a place called Queertasticland, where the mayor encourages him to embrace his sexuality. Some of the jokes are a bit silly, but the collection charms with its conceit of a motel as refuge for private desires. This is worth a look. (June)