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The Invisible Hotel
The Invisible Hotel: A Novel | Yeji Y. Ham
2 posts | 3 read | 1 to read
A work of literary horror in the gothic tradition, The Invisible Hotel is a startling, speculative tale of political and ideological adolescence in the long afterlife of the Korean War. Yewon dreams of a hotel. In the hotel, there are infinite keys to infinite rooms—and a quiet terror she is desperate to escape. When Yewon wakes, she sees her life: a young woman, out of her job at a convenience store, trapped in the tiny South Korean village of her birth, watching her mother wash the bones of their ancestors in their decrepit bathtub. Every house has them, these rotting and fragmented bones, reminders of what they have all lost to a war that never seems to end. Yewon and her siblings were born in this bathtub—and every year women give birth to new babies in the bathtub. Now, Yewon’s brother is stationed near the North Korean border, her sister has just undergone a life-changing tragedy, and her mother is constantly worried, her health declining. In crisis and in stasis, Yewon’s dreams of the decrepit hotel lead her to an unsettling truth about her country’s collective heritage. Recalling international trailblazers like Han Kang’s The Vegetarian and Yoko Ogawa’s The Memory Police, The Invisible Hotel marks the arrival of a singular new voice with a sharp social acumen.
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review
sarahbarnes
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Mehso-so

This wasn‘t what I expected, and definitely not a top pick for me from the #TOBlonglist. I liked the creepy nature of the dreams in the story and I appreciated reading about the Korean War, but much of the time I struggled to stay engaged in the story.

BarbaraBB I have this one on my shelves. Thanks for the heads up! 13h
sarahbarnes @BarbaraBB maybe you‘ll like it more than I did. I just wasn‘t feeling it. 3h
30 likes2 comments
review
vlwelser
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Pickpick

This is pretty dark. It is dripping in metaphor. Mostly it talks about living in the aftermath of the Korean War. It's sort of haunting but I wouldn't necessarily call it horror.

#BookSpinBingo @TheAromaofBooks

US pub date is 3/5/24
#ARC #Netgalley

batsy Sounds really interesting! 10mo
TheAromaofBooks Woohoo!! 10mo
sarahbarnes I just read an article about this and went to stack it. Sounds very intriguing. 10mo
35 likes1 stack add3 comments