Description: "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 "There''s Borges and Bolao, Kafka and Cortzar, Modiano and Murakami, and now Laura van den Berg. The acclaimed author of two story collections and a novel, van den Berg has always been good, but with The Third Hotel she''s become fantastic -- in every sense of the word . . . The fantastic plot is elevated by van den Berg''s fantastic writing and unique twists of language . . . These sentences aren''t flourishes of showoff; nothing unoriginal slips by in this flawless novel . . . so much subtextual lava is coursing under the surface of every page of "The Third Hotel" that the book feels like it''s going to erupt in your hands." --Randy Rosenthal, The Washington Post "Strange, unsettling, and profound from start to finish, The Third Hotel is a book teeming with the kind of chaos that can only emanate from the mind. It could be fairly described as a meditation on grief, or marriage, or travel; fresh insights on each materialize regularly, at enviable levels of nuance . . . [van den Berg] gets under your skin and hits bone. Hers is a terror tale as mercurial as life, veering between the grisly and the gentle . . . The Third Hotel ultimately probes one woman''s reaction to the senseless." --David Canfield, Entertainment Weekly "Laura van den Berg is an artist of the uncanny. As with some surrealist painting, devour her work quickly and the trick will not snag . . . Clare''s eerie perceptional wobbles are conjured beautifully by van den Berg, who sees like a painter and narrates like a crime reporter. To read The Third Hotel sometimes feels like following a character based on Joan Didion sinking deeper into a universe whose laws were written by Patricia Highsmith . . . We are anchored by loss, set free by love, clichs tell us. What, this exquisitely written book asks, if it''s the opposite? In doing so van den Berg drives home an inversion far scarier than any zombie film." --John Freeman, The Boston Globe " The Third Hotel contains all of the ingredients for a classic work of horror . . . Not every author can make a character both fly through supernatural events and remain grounded in a place the way van den Berg does with Clare. The strength of van den Berg''s storytelling comes from Clare''s attempts to solve the mystery of why Richard has hunkered down in a different country, layered with grief from back home that continues to haunt her. She''s a "final girl" whose denouement horrifies in a modern, bloodless way." --Bethanne Patrick, TIME "Van Den Berg doesn''t do neatness. She does elegance. She writes with off-kilter beauty and absolute relaxation; the less peaceful a sentence should be, the more peaceful it is . . . The Third Hotel is a novel that operates in symbols and layers, which means you can read it however you like. There''s no one ending, no right answer, and as a result, it will take away your internal compass. It will unmoor you, send you wobbling around your house in a haze. It will slide some eels under your skin. My recommendation? Let it. We can all stand to learn some new truths." --Lily Meyer, NPR.org "Wonderful, lucid, mysterious." --James Wood, Conde Nast Traveler "Beautiful and unsettling . . . Julio Cortzar 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) " The Third Hotel sets a creepy, unsettling mood . . . . Steeped in magical realism, The Third Hotel is a dreamy and lushly rendered study of bereavement, the loneliness of travel, and the intricacies of a marriage. This is a gorgeous and layered novel that will haunt you for days after you''ve finished." --Samantha Irby, Marie Claire "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 "Reading Laura van den Berg''s disquieting new novel, The Third Hotel , is akin to walking out of a dark movie theater into bright sunlight. Part of you is still living in a cinematic dreamscape. The real world is what''s imaginary . . . the writing is lovely and fluid. She is comfortable with ambiguity, and The Third Hotel isn''t intent on resolution. It reminds me of another hotel, that one in California, where "you can check out anytime you like, but you can never leave." Haunting." --Nancy Pate, Minneapolis Star Tribune " The Third Hotel is both a meditation on sorrow and longing--for answers, insight, closure--and a haunted and haunting quest narrative whose slimness belies an ocean of eerie power . . . An utterly transfixing, dreamlike descent into the depths of a psyche stricken by grief and confusion, The Third Hotel is miniature marvel and the most unsettling book you''ll read all year." --Dan Sheehan, LitHub "Laura van den Berg''s brilliant new novel, The Third Hotel , is a quasi-supernatural tale of loss and grief, told with an exquisite flair for language . . . The Third Hotel is van den Berg''s second novel and fourth book of fiction, and with it, she has firmly established herself as one of this country''s premier stylists. A dreamy otherworldliness haunts these pages, and will, I wager, haunt you, as it did me, long after you finish this slim and masterful mood piece. I dare you to make it to the final, piercing line--which I won''t spoil here--and not feel as if the world you live in has been irrevocably changed." --Nick White, Chicago Review of Books "Gorgeously eerie . . . Dense and uncompromisingly intelligent, The Third Hotel is uninterested in leading the reader to a simple answer. Buoyed by van den Berg''s sinuous, marvelous sentences, the novel is instead a deep dive into memory, love, and loss as filtered through film theory, metaphysics, and the humid, sunstroked cityscape of Havana. A lesser writer might have lost themself in this byzantine world of maybe-doppelgangers and maybe-zombies and maybe-madness, but Laura van den Berg is one of our most accomplished storytellers--it is no surprise that she has elevated the uncannily horrifying into something achingly human . . . The Third Hotel is a kind of dream, one that should be repeated. Finish the book, ponder the dream, then read it--dream it--again." --Chase Burke, Ploughshare s " The Third Hotel amounts to more than thrills and chills. Van den Berg has swapped out the stages of grief for an alternative recovery process, one that refreshes old notions of female power and identity . . . This story, adapting horror tropes to new ends, releases "the widow thrashing within." By catching and seducing her zombie--and then finally letting him go--Clare''s stages of grief deliver her not to Zen-like acceptance, but to a place of potent new monsters. "--John Dimini, The Sewanee Review " Enter The Third Hotel like a portal, and surrender to a surreal, vivid, impossible yet clearly realistic adventure . . . Van Den Berg uses cinematic language, imagery and structure in this impressionistic portrait of a marriage that has come undone, a woman whose reality is skewed and a sea swept island filled with seductive art, strange vistas and unexpected danger." --Jane Ciabattari, BBC Culture " The Third Hotel will play tricks on you--and that''s the point . . . he Third Hotel is a meditation on the thin fault line between imagination and reality, on grief, and on marriage. It''s Twin Peaks meets literary fiction." --Elena Nicolaou, Refinery29 "Laura van den Berg''s new novel, The Third Hotel , covers a thematically sprawling range of subjects, from zombie films to the secret flaws of a marriage to the process of grieving someone who may not be as dead as initially expected. The result is a haunting, ambiguous novel, cerebral and tactile in equal measure." -- Vol. 1 Brooklyn "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 "Mysterious and engrossing . . . Toying with horror tropes and conventions, and displaying shades of authors such as Julio Cortzar, 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 " The Third Hotel luxuriates in the fertile narrative ground of the uncanny, the phantasmagoric and the depths of grief. Van den Berg explores the contours of the most intimate human relationships: between married couples and between parents and children. This is heavy stuff, but Van den Berg also delights in her fluency with film culture and Latin American modes of expression. She evokes the colors, sounds and tastes of Cuba without exoticizing the island and winks repeatedly at Latin American culture without appropriating it." --Ryne Clos, Spectrum Culture "Brooding, often-surreal, funera

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