Laura Van Den Berg’s work, a delicate dance between the personal and the uncanny, is a testament to the power of blurring the lines between autofiction and speculative fiction. Through a haunting blend of reality and the surreal, she crafts narratives that resonate with both the intimate and the universal.

Van Den Berg’s debut novel, “What Strange Creatures,” established her voice. The novel, told through a series of linked stories, explores themes of motherhood, grief, and the unsettling nature of everyday life. This exploration continues in her later work, including the chilling “Find Me” and the haunting “The Third Hotel.”

What sets Van Den Berg apart is her uncanny ability to weave elements of the speculative into the mundane. In “Find Me,” a woman haunted by a series of unsettling events grapples with the disintegration of her family and the erosion of her own identity. While the novel centers on deeply personal struggles, the supernatural elements, like the recurring image of a lost child, serve as potent metaphors for the disintegration of the self.

Similarly, in “The Third Hotel,” Van Den Berg plunges us into a world where reality itself feels fractured. A protagonist, adrift in a sea of grief after her husband’s death, encounters a strange and unsettling hotel, where time seems to warp and reality bends at the edges. Through this surreal landscape, Van Den Berg probes the nature of grief and loss, reminding us that the line between the real and the imagined can be eerily thin.

The power of Van Den Berg’s work lies not simply in the uncanny elements, but in the way she uses them to illuminate the deeply human experiences of grief, loss, and the anxieties of the modern world. Her protagonists, often women navigating a world that feels increasingly disorienting, mirror the fears and uncertainties we all grapple with.

Her autofictional approach, a blend of personal experience and fictionalized narrative, allows her to explore these anxieties in a deeply intimate and relatable manner. By merging the personal and the speculative, she creates a space where the reader can confront their own anxieties and fears in a unique and unsettlingly beautiful way.

In an age where the line between the real and the digital blurs, Van Den Berg’s work feels particularly timely. She reminds us that the unsettling aspects of our world aren’t confined to the realm of science fiction. They exist in the everyday, in the anxieties that grip us, and in the very fabric of our reality.

Through her work, Van Den Berg invites us to confront these anxieties, to embrace the unsettling beauty of the unknown, and to find meaning in a world that often feels like it’s teetering on the edge of something both familiar and utterly alien.