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The Third Hotel

by Laura Van Den Berg
The Third Hotel

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ISBN13: 9780374168353
ISBN10: 0374168350
Condition: Standard
DustJacket: Standard

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From Powells.com

Powell's Picks of the Month

Hot new releases and under-the-radar gems for adults and kids.


Staff Top Fives 2018

Our favorite books of the year.


Staff Pick

Laura van den Berg's new novel, The Third Hotel, is an exquisite exploration of grief, travel, and intimacy. It's also got an extremely compelling story: Clare, an elevator sales rep, goes alone to a horror movie festival in Havana after her husband, a film scholar, dies in a car accident. A few days later, to her shock, she sees him standing in front of a museum. Thus begins a surreal, intuitive, unsettling journey through Clare's past and psyche that is my favorite book of 2018 so far. Recommended By Jill O., Powells.com

Synopses & Reviews

Publisher Comments

"[A] future cult classic." — The New York Times Book Review

An August 2018 IndieNext Selection.


In Havana, Cuba, a widow tries to come to terms with her husband’s death — and the truth about their marriage — in Laura van den Berg’s surreal, mystifying story of psychological reflection and metaphysical mystery.

Shortly after Clare arrives in Havana, Cuba, to attend the annual Festival of New Latin American Cinema, she finds her husband, Richard, standing outside a museum. He’s wearing a white linen suit she’s never seen before, and he’s supposed to be dead. Grief-stricken and baffled, Clare tails Richard, a horror film scholar, through the newly tourist-filled streets of Havana, clocking his every move. As the distinction between reality and fantasy blurs, Clare finds grounding in memories of her childhood in Florida and of her marriage to Richard, revealing her role in his death and reappearance along the way. The Third Hotel is a propulsive, brilliantly shape-shifting novel from an inventive author at the height of her narrative powers.

Review

"Always vivid...There's no denying [Van den Berg's] skill at rendering this material; her sentences, at their best, are extraordinarily lucid, lodging places and people indelibly in memory...Read [The Third Hotel] as the inscrutable future cult classic it probably is, and let yourself be carried along by its twisting, unsettling currents." J. Robert Lennon, The New York Times Book Review

Review

"Wonderful, lucid, mysterious." James Wood, Conde Nast Traveler

Review

"Beautiful and unsettling...Julio Cortázar could see himself walking the partially erased and re-inscribed streets of Van den Berg’s imagination, but in the end those streets are, without a doubt, Van den Berg’s own." Christian Kiefer, The Paris Review (Staff Pick)

Review

"A twisty exploration of grief and perception as well as the ways in which we contribute to our own undoing." Julia Pierpont, O, the Oprah Magazine

Review

"Laced through with sharp insights — not just on marriage and grief, but also on the pull of travel and the dynamics of horror movies — the layers of [The Third Hotel] fit together so seamlessly they're almost Escher-esque. The line between the real and the imagined is forever blurry, and the result of all that ambiguity is both moving and unsettling. Gorgeously haunting and wholly original; a novel that rewards patience." Kirkus

Review

"Mysterious and engrossing....Toying with horror tropes and conventions, and displaying shades of authors such as Julio Cortázar, Van den Berg turns Clare’s journey into a dreamlike exploration of grief. This is a potent novel about life, death, and the afterlife." Publishers Weekly

Review

"Brooding, often-surreal, funerally bemusing...Van den Berg's entrancing, gorgeously enigmatic tale dramatizes the narcosis of grief." Booklist

About the Author

Laura van den Berg is the author of two story collections, What the World Will Look Like When All the Water Leaves Us and The Isle of Youth, and the novel Find Me. She is the recipient of a Rosenthal Family Foundation Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the Bard Fiction Prize, an O. Henry Award, and a MacDowell Colony fellowship. Born and raised in Florida, she lives in Cambridge, MA, with her husband and dog.

Laura van den Berg on PowellsBooks.Blog

Laura van den Berg's new novel, The Third Hotel, is an exquisite exploration of grief, travel, and intimacy. It's also got an extremely compelling story...

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What Our Readers Are Saying

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Average customer rating 2 (1 comments)

`
Elizabeth Vollbach , October 02, 2018 (view all comments by Elizabeth Vollbach)
The book flap on THE THIRD HOTEL calls it “surreal” and “mystifying.” I think that is a nice way of saying “unintelligible” and “confusing.” The story made little sense to me. I read and reread paragraphs, hoping that the problem was my own inattention. Perhaps Laura van den Berg said something that I missed, which was certainly possible; she snuck details into paragraphs that seemed to have nothing to do with anything. I could be wrong when I describe this story. I can only say this is how it seemed. Clare seems to be having a nervous breakdown after her husband died. I doubt my impression about this, though, because she also didn’t seem with-it in some of her flashbacks from before he died. Clare travels to Havana, Cuba, to attend a horror film festival, a trip her husband had planned. Regardless of the number of times I reread paragraphs, I couldn't figure out why. I guess she thinks she will learn something about him. While in Havana, Clare sees her husband. For most of the rest of the book, she follows him around. Remember, he’s dead. Clare does a lot of weird, crazy things, and the people she encounters often seem unreal. Heck, everything seems unreal. This book made me feel stupid. I didn't get it.

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Product Details

ISBN:
9780374168353
Binding:
Hardcover
Publication date:
08/07/2018
Publisher:
FARRAR STRAUS & GIROUX
Pages:
224
Height:
.90IN
Width:
5.70IN
Illustration:
Yes
Author:
Laura Van Den Berg

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$10.95
List Price:$26.00
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