Laura Van Den Berg

Laura Van Den Berg’s unsettling new novel The Third Hotel traces the journey of an American woman named Clare, who unexpectedly finds her dead husband while aimlessly roaming Havana. She knows a lot about elevators; he was a scholar of horror movies. The author has clearly done her research about both. Actresses and ostriches disappear, a train derails, doorbells and rotary phones inexplicably ring, and the whole thing has a David Lynch-like approach to whether details actually matter, even before the scene where Clare thinks she hears Roy Orbison in Spanish. It’s creepy and moves quickly. Van Den Berg reads and talks with Annie Hartnett (Rabbit Cake) at Twenty Stories, the seasonally mobile bookstore which now has a permanent space in Hope Artiste Village.