num_pages: 320
description: An atmospheric suspenseful story of a couple's struggle to adopt a baby while staying in a fading grand European hotel. (Think: Barton Fink crossed with Patricia Highsmith)In this atmospheric suspenseful novel an American couple travels to a strange snowy European city to adopt a baby who they hope will resurrect their failing marriage. Their difficult journey leaves the wife who is struggling with cancer desperately weak and her husband worries that her apparent illness will prevent the orphanage from releasing their child.The couple check into the cavernous and eerily deserted Borgarfjaroasysla Grand Imperial Hotel where the bar is always open the restaurant serves thirteen-course dinners from centuries past and the doors of the guest rooms have been salvaged from demolished opera houses. Their attempt to claim their baby is both helped and hampered by the people they encounter: an ancient flamboyant chanteuse a debauched businessman an enigmatic faith healer and a stoic bartender who dispenses an addictive lichen-flavored schnapps. Nothing is as it seems in this mysterious frozen world and the longer the couple endure the punishing cold the less they seem to know about their marriage themselves and life itself. What Happens at Night is a masterpiece (Edmund White) poised on the cusp of reality told by an elegantly acute and mysteriously beguiling writer (Richard Eder The Boston Globe).
language: English
title: What Happens at Night
publisher: Catapult