What Happens at Night

Written by Peter Cameron

Narrated by Christopher Lane

A couple find themselves at a fading, grand European hotel full of eccentric and sometimes unsettling patrons in this ""faultlessly elegant and quietly menacing"" allegorical story that examines the significance of shifting desires and the uncertainty of reality (Garth Greenwell, author of Cleanness).

An American couple travel to a strange, snowy European city to adopt a baby, who they hope will resurrect their failing marriage. This 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 and the restaurant serves thirteen–course dinners from centuries past. 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
• Publisher: Brilliance Audio
• Release date: Aug 4, 2020
• ISBN: 9781713551249

Peter Cameron

Peter Cameron is the author of Andorra, The City of Your Final Destination, and Someday This Pain Will Be Useful to You. His work has appeared in The New Yorker, Grand Street, and The Paris Review. He lives in New York City.

Reviews for What Happens at Night

[Zaiden Gokhool · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

The style of this book, as other have mentioned, is odd. The main characters don’t seem to have names except « the man » and « the woman » at least until chapter 6, which is about as far as I could manage. I just couldn’t connect with the characters and their emotions seem off and contrived, wooden. When I first read the description of the storyline, it intrigued me, but unfortunately, at least for me, it didn’t live up to it’s promise.

[beamis12 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I'm not even sure how to describe what I read. This is one strange book, but because of its strangeness, it's bleak atmosphere, I found it intriguing. I had to find out what was going on. A couple arrive at a deserted train station in a European city. They have come to adopt a child. The woman is dying and this is the only place that would allow them to adopt. A grand hotel peopled by some very strange people, a healer, a debauched business man, a stoic bartender. Who are these people. Why do they stay here?So, as I read I thought one way, than another. A real mind bender of a read. I think, and make note of the think, because even after finishing I'm not quite sure I'm right, that I figured it out. A challenging story, but somehow enticing nonetheless.