This is not quite a linear marital drama, however, nor a somber exploration of memory and loss.
She gets under your skin and hits bone.
Hers is a terror tale as mercurial as life, veering between the grisly and the gentle.
Credit: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
An award-winning writer of short fiction, van den Berg is a storyteller of astonishing detail.
Her descriptions whether concise or elongated simply demand attention.
But then the mood shifts in gracefully poignant directions.
Clares bumpy, wistful relationship with her husband is over, and yet it continues.
Its mystery is propelled by instinct, of an atmospheric logic realized by van den Berg with bloodcurdling realism.
And the novel is slim, at just over 200 pages.
Yet its many elements combine with inexplicable ingenuity, provoking thought through disorientation.
Death is everywhere, but its life thats tormenting her.
Shes annoyed, confused, sad.
What seemed complete is anything but; she has no choice but to face the past.
Its a key moment in the novel.The Third Hotelultimately probes one womans reaction to the senseless.
Its par forThe Third Hotels course.
