Laura van den Berg is an artist of the uncanny. Instead, read it as the inscrutable future cult classic it probably is, and let yourself be carried along by its twisting, unsettling currents. Don’t take the bait when The Third Hotel starts voguing like a thriller. It is in its weirdest passages that a reader is most likely to accept, even embrace, these instances of arch self-consciousness at these times the book is thrilling. The Third Hotel is at its best when it makes no claim to psychological realism. Van den Berg’s previous work, her short stories in particular, are prized for their thoughtfulness and descriptive intensity, and this book seems to me a refinement and intensification of those skills. What we get instead of narrative momentum is a richness of theme and an abundance of detail. Scenes begin with clear goals in mind, then are sidetracked questions, pointedly asked, go unanswered. If Clare is obsessed with negation and absence, The Third Hotel is eager to abet her: The book enthusiastically (and, I presume, deliberately) derails itself again and again.
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