Sunday, December 23, 2018

#55: The Third Hotel by Laura Van Den Berg

A woman's husband is killed in a hit-and-run, and on a whim she goes ahead with his plan to attend a film festival in Havana, only to catch a glimpse of him there in Laura Van Den Berg's The Third Hotel.

Although this thumbnail description sounds more like a straightforward thriller, the novel is more a meditation on the mysteries of lives and marriages, with the unreliable narrator as elusive as the unexplained sightings of her husband.

Van Den Berg is a very literate writer, which sets some of the genre trappings--including an ongoing discourse on horror movies and how they relate to the main narrative--into the background. 

Interesting and rewarding throughout.

I checked this out from the New Castle-Henry County Public Library in New Castle, Indiana, and read it quickly.

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