What Happens At Night - Peter Cameron

 

Genre: Literary Fiction | Absurdist Fiction | Adult Fiction

Release Date: Expected 26th August 2021

Publisher: Europa Editions 

A faceless, nameless American couple arrive that night in a strange, snow-covered European city with one hope - to finally adopt the baby boy who they think will save their resentful marriage, their unhappy lives and their fear that the wife will soon die from the stage four cancer weakening her body.

When they check in to Borgarfjaroasysla Grand Imperial Hotel - they enter a new world, frozen in time. Here, the bar never closes, the drinks seem like magic potions, dinner is always ten courses and everybody has something to tell you. What seemed like a simple journey to the orphanage becomes more complicated by the second; muggings and wrong directions, a mysterious healer, a seemingly immortal former actress draped in fur, an uncomfortably familiar businessman and a silently intuitive bartender all help them on their journey - but not the one they wanted.

"Everyone goes to bed eventually, don't they? That's what happens at night. People disappear. Or they're not even there in the first place."

 

As soon as we stepped into the echoey lobby of the Borgarfjaroasysla, the whole hotel felt hauntingly familiar yet captivatingly curious - like a live entity itself, a permanent fixture in time that is visited by temporary lives like our couple and the other residents. Each person we slowly learn about has a strange story to tell, whether we want to listen or not.

Isolated and detatched from our nameless couple, we feel somewhat alienated from their journey but it works in this instance - as though we are watching from above, unable to get too close, unable to fully understand their relationship and just how the love had burned away and left resentment and disgust in its wake. 

What Happens at Night is an absurd, brutal exploration into the human condition, toeing the line between humour and heartbreak and playing with the many facets that create our experience and the inevitable loss, desperation and longing that comes from being alive. Our couple have to try to learn the similarities between love and hate, and as their time in the Borgarfjaroasysla stretches onwards, we can see them unravel as they slowly lose everything they know about each other, about themselves, about the idea of life itself. 

Mixing psychological realism with an air of enchantment and eccentricity - this is one of those stories that will stay in my head long after the last page.

RATING: ⭐⭐⭐⭐

Thank you to Europa Editions and Peter Cameron for this ARC in return for an honest review.