Overview of The Nudge by Joseph Fink
This excerpt is framed by a Night Vale Presents promotion for Joseph Fink’s new horror novel, The Nudge, with repeated calls to pre-order the book and attend related events. The excerpt itself is a creepy, atmospheric monologue from a hotel employee who fills time during a slow elevator ride by explaining the strange history of the building: a wealthy family home, then an eccentric grief-driven expansion project, then a failed university, and finally a hotel. The tone is eerie, darkly funny, and distinctly in the Night Vale style.
Key Points
- Book announcement: Joseph Fink says The Nudge is his first new novel in five years and releases on September 1.
- Formats available:
- Hardcover illustrated by Jessica Hayworth
- Audiobook narrated by Cecil Baldwin and Kevin R. Free
- Tour/event mentions: Fink notes a short California book tour with stops including:
- San Francisco
- Santa Cruz
- Santa Barbara
- San Diego
- A launch-day event in Pasadena with Mara Wilson
- Call to action: Listeners are encouraged to pre-order the book and attend in-person events if possible.
Excerpt Summary
The hotel’s strange history
The excerpt begins with a hotel employee explaining that the elevator is unusually slow but safe, then offering a history of the building:
- It started as a wealthy family’s country home, used seasonally.
- After the owner’s husband died, she entered a period of grief-fueled compulsive building:
- added endless hallways
- created party lounges she never used
- built staircases that led nowhere
- The home became so sprawling and maze-like that it seemed like she was trying to hide inside the house or build her way out of grief.
- Eventually, overwhelmed by cost and loneliness, she gave the building to an institution of higher learning.
The failed university
The house was converted into a university, but it was ill-suited for that purpose:
- It was remote and hard to navigate
- Students and faculty struggled with the building’s confusing layout
- A student may have been lost permanently in an elevator shaft incident
- The university’s existence was unsustainable, and the original owner remained obsessed with a deeper meaning behind her husband’s death
The owner’s unanswered question
The former owner believed her husband’s death was a message from something beyond human understanding:
- She wanted academics to explain what the message meant
- None of them could
- The employee reflects that death offers no clear message, only the unsettling fact that life rests above a void
The building becomes a hotel
When the university fails, the property is sold again:
- The current owner buys it because the building’s strangeness seems suitable for a hotel
- Guests are expected to find the eerie atmosphere memorable rather than off-putting
- The hotel has become a small but loyal destination, valued for “quality over quantity”
Themes and Tone
Themes
- Grief and obsession
- Meaninglessness and uncertainty
- Buildings as expressions of inner turmoil
- The eerie comfort of strange places
- The allure of the uncanny
Tone
- Suspenseful and unsettling
- Darkly humorous
- Philosophical without becoming abstract
- Very much in the Night Vale tradition of ordinary speech carrying something deeply ominous beneath it
Practical Takeaways
- If you enjoy Night Vale, Alice Isn’t Dead, or weird atmospheric horror, this excerpt is meant to be a strong fit.
- The book is being positioned as a scary, character-driven story with a literary-horror feel.
- The promotional material strongly encourages:
- pre-ordering the book
- choosing between illustrated hardcover or audiobook
- checking out book tour events and links in the show notes
Notable Line of Thought
- The excerpt’s core idea is that some spaces seem to absorb human grief and keep reshaping themselves around it.
- The final implication is that the hotel exists because people are willing to pay for a controlled version of the uncanny.