What Happens At Night: A Haunting Dive into Love and Despair

Synopsis:

In Peter Cameron’s What Happens at Night, an unnamed American couple travels to a remote, snowbound city in northern Europe to adopt a child. The Wife, weakened by a recurrent illness, seeks solace and renewal, while the Husband suppresses his anxieties under a veneer of calm. Upon arrival at the decaying Grand Imperial Hotel, they encounter the enigmatic Boyne, an exiled American singer who offers cryptic warnings and unexpected companionship. Their journey grows more unsettling as they meet Claudia, a brusque adoption official, and Mara, a hospice worker who tends to the Wife with unnerving intimacy. The couple’s carefully laid plans begin to unravel amid the region’s eerie quiet, faded grandeur, and disorienting rituals. Confronted by moral ambiguities and their own emotional distance, the Husband and Wife are forced to question not only the future of their child but also the viability of their marriage and their own capacity for love.