Welcome to Litsy!

Is the ultimate thing to fear losing someone close to you? Clare‘s husband, a professor who studies horror films, has died suddenly, and she attends his last-scheduled film festival in Havana without him. He is waiting for her in Cuba, though, as a ghost. What follows is a trippy, nightmarish look at grief. While this book flashed moments of brilliance, overall it was okay.

Wow! I‘m not a person who reads books more than once but this is one I imagine I‘ll return to. It‘s FULL of ideas & theories — about cinema, storytelling, & life — yet it somehow reads quickly.

It‘s a story about presence & absence — about feeling trapped & unsettled. It‘s a story of paradox. It‘s also a story about the horrors of grief — of losing someone important to you — in the same way that Buffy is a story about the horrors of high school.

After Clare‘s husband dies, she spots his double in Cuba, calmly sitting at a cafe table. He is nonchalantly eating a mango & reading a book, as if it‘s normal & not impossible. She observes him closely, desperately:

“She noticed every movement. She was certain she had never noticed him so thoroughly. Radically alert and radically alive and why on earth had she waited so long to pay this kind of attention?”

This is, ostensibly, about parenthood — but if it‘s not the perfect quote for love in the time of COVID, I don‘t know what is:

“Oh, the thin line between love and exhaustion. The thin line between love and indifference. The thin line between I Am Like a Little Boat Cut Loose in a Storm Without You and You Are Driving Me Rapidly Insane.”

Clare goes to Cuba on the trip she and her recently deceased husband were supposed to take together. But then she sees him there. At first, this seemed like maybe it was a sort of mystery and certainly a meditation on death, but then it just got weird. It really didn‘t work for me.

Some of my holds came in today! I‘m excited at how slim they all are so that I can just blow right through them, since I‘m waaaay behind on my Goodreads goal for the year.

This book is very unsettling. It‘s a horror novel - I had no idea. A recently widowed woman goes to Cuba. And there, she sees her husband.
Thus begins a strange, haunting examination of when relationships truly end. Here is there - then is now - every possibility is possible - and some things are unknowable. Van Den Berg grips you, makes you gasp, shakes you hard at the end, and then leaves you to sort it all out.
Just like living & dying.

My son chose this for me at the library last weekend, because I “love hotels AND books”. Turns out I put it on my goodreads TBR last year. 🙂

Finally taking some steps to get my book/food blog back up and running. 💪💪💪

A widow goes to a film festival in Cuba to see a horror movie that her deceased husband was excited about. I loved The Third Hotel! It explores perception, perspective, identity and loss in a unique way.

Catching up on my Powell‘s books.

New arrivals in research reading 📖

A ghost story & a grief story - as all good ghost stories are. Weaving magical realism and horror movie tropes together - there is the palpable sense of dislocation that comes with travel to a new, enticing, yet slightly menacing place. This novel ambles along like a dream. And dang, but Van Den Berg can WRITE.

The ending was a bit of a let down - I felt it could‘ve - maybe should‘ve - ended when Clare left Cuba, but that‘s okay - still a pick.

No one, that was who.

Had to drop it. Gorgeous language, but frustrating for some reason. Not the read I‘m needing right now...might try again a bit later. Maybe. We shall see!

Early in and already caught in the spell....

I visited Cuba in winter of 2016, and this novel took me back. Here‘s a work from the factory turned club/art gallery that Clare visits.

Great quote on theater-going from a book obsessed with liminal spaces.

The deepest pleasure of the zombie story.

i love her way with words 💕 “Oh, the thin line between love and exhaustion. The thin line between love and indifference. The thin line between I Am Like a Little Boat Cut Loose in a Storm Without You and You Are Driving Me Rapidly Insane.”

Reading The Third Hotel was like being in a fever dream full of extraordinarily beautiful sentences. I‘m honestly not sure what the hell was going on in this novel. Is this a ghost story? Has her husband come back from the dead? Has she gone insane with grief? I can‘t spoil it because I honestly don‘t know. But I do know I read some of the most achingly true sentences on love, marriage, grief, and secrets I have ever encountered.

So happy this is available as an audio book finally!

“Why make a horror film?”
Terrific answer.

I really liked this one.

What an odd book.

A #TOB longlist #libraryhaul.

I had hopes for this book, but about 50 pages I decided I could not stick with it. It was a little all over the place for me.

Up next. I loved Van den Berg‘s Find Me and What the World Will Look Like When All the Water Leaves It, so I can‘t wait to start her latest.

This book was a bit of a slog. Cuba is an interesting setting for book that relies heavily on atmosphere. But Clare is such a shadowy main character- eventually I just wanted to reach the last page.

On an interesting note, this is the third book I‘ve read this year that featured a character getting stuck in a well. What‘s up with that? Is the universe trying to tell me something?

Reading time = time to play fetch (I have been throwing this half-skinned tennis ball, which she also dropped in her water bowl so it is a little wet, for hours)

I‘m having a tough time getting through this one. It‘s a bit of a fever dream.

A woman sees her husband‘s ghost at a Havana film festival. Or does she? Thoughtful exploration of grief and getting closure.

I love novels that double as fever dreams, where you‘re never quite sure what‘s real and what‘s not.

What a bizarre languorous “ghost” story. Caring neither to inform or entertain, it is the most selfish novel I‘ve read in some time. A few sentences were constructed beautifully but meant nothing towards the greater story. Although brief I picked up and put this down dozens of times, forcing myself to get through it in order to properly evaluate it to review for NetGalley/the publisher. I wanted to like it.
(Continued 👇🏻)

In terms of narrative- I‘m not really sure what this novel is ultimately about. I felt maybe it wasn‘t that important to think about what was or wasn‘t “actually” happening, or how any of these vignettes fitted together. What mattered (perhaps?) was what these moments, events, experiences show us about ourselves; the human psyche. The exploration of grief, marriage and the self (or our many selves) was what really engaged me in this novel.

⭐️⭐️⭐️

This one lies somewhere on the border of Pick and So-So .
It has elicited a vague shrug and nodding admiration from me but somehow it leaves no real lasting impression.
I believe this book could have worked exceedingly well either as a focused short story or alternatively a more fully realised novel with a discernible plot. As it stands, it is frustratingly ephemeral, doomed to slip from my mind entirely in a few days.

Love this. #indiebuddyreads

#indiebuddyreads

Oooo I love this- the sides of marriage, and the humiliation #indiebuddyreads

#indiebuddyreads

A bit late to this #indiebuddyreads but hopefully I can power read today!

A creative and atmospheric exploration of grief and, especially, the hidden depths and secret desires of ourselves and those we love. It is about the impossibility of truly knowing ourselves, let alone anyone else. The imagery is heavy handed at times, but overall, definitely worth a read.
#indiebuddyreads

#indiebuddyreads I enjoyed the writing in this book about grief, losing yourself in travel, and daring to take a look at your ‘secret‘ self. Parts of the plot are vague, which would normally bother me, but in this case the vagueness added a subtly creepy element to the story. We go deep into the protagonist‘s psyche here, and there is some musing about what we choose to see or not see about ourselves. And, if we do see, how do we cope with it? 4⭐️

There may be a #boogieman is this book for all I know. I couldn‘t focus, kept skimming the pages. Not for me, this book. Or horror in general for that matter 😱

#SpookyRead #Booked2018 #OctoberXFiles

Wild ride!

This line.... reading this while trying to avoid the disgusting news coverage

Clare‘s husband has died in a hit and run accident. She travels to Cuba to a film festival to see the film he was to review- Revolucion Zombi. While there she encounters her dead husband- maybe? I found this book to be similar to Fever Dream, a book I wasn‘t as fond of as many reviewers and I‘d say the same for this. If you loved Fever Dream then certainly check out this 200 page work as well. 3⭐️

This one needs to go back to the library- it‘s only 200 pages and it is raining- Whiskey still is not pleased about it!!! #DogsOfLitsy

“There were three sides to a marriage: public and private and who-fucking-knows, one lived and one performed and one a thundering mystery.”