![]() ![]() Clare, a 37-year-old sales rep for an elevator company whose marriage was good, bad and mysterious, admits to feeling unmoored. “The Third Hotel” can be as slippery as any eel. ![]() Viewers are plunged into a state of terror when you “take away their compass, their tools for navigating the world.” What’s left are new truths, “swimming like eels under the skin.” There’s also a nod to Daphne du Maurier’s chilly short story “Don’t Look Now.” Early on in the narrative, the director of the zombie movie says the foundation of horror is a dislocation of reality. Has Clare’s grief conjured a ghost? Or is this a case of mistaken identity? Van den Berg lets her surreal tale do the telling, paying homage to Latin American cinema and horror films in the process. She follows him, loses sight of him, sees him again. ![]() Now she’s in Cuba on a trip they had planned to see the premiere of a Latin American zombie movie. A film scholar working on a book, Richard died five weeks before in a hit-and-run accident near their upstate New York home. The book has the premise of a thriller, what with recent widow Clare spotting her dead husband, Richard, in a white linen suit outside a Havana museum. Part of you is still living in a cinematic dreamscape. ![]() 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. ![]()
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