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The Invisible Hotel
The Invisible Hotel: A Novel | Yeji Y. Ham
3 posts | 4 read | 2 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 roomsand 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 bathtuband every year women give birth to new babies in the bathtub. Now, Yewons 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, Yewons dreams of the decrepit hotel lead her to an unsettling truth about her countrys collective heritage. Recalling international trailblazers like Han Kangs The Vegetarian and Yoko Ogawas The Memory Police, The Invisible Hotel marks the arrival of a singular new voice with a sharp social acumen.
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review
BarbaraBB
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Mehso-so

The speculative tale of Yewon, a young woman adrift, and of the relationship between the Koreas. At first it is rather realistic, with Yewon wondering about her life while driving a North Korean woman to her long lost brother in prison and while worrying about her mom, who keeps and daily washes the bones of family members. Yewon doesn‘t eat and dreams of an invisible hotel. And are the Koreas heading for peace or war?Very weird. #ToB25Longlist

squirrelbrain I‘m not really drawn to this one 🤷‍♀️ 3w
GatheringBooks Speculative fiction is a hit or miss for me too. 3w
73 likes1 stack add3 comments
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! 2mo
sarahbarnes @BarbaraBB maybe you‘ll like it more than I did. I just wasn‘t feeling it. 2mo
36 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! 12mo
TheAromaofBooks Woohoo!! 12mo
sarahbarnes I just read an article about this and went to stack it. Sounds very intriguing. 12mo
35 likes1 stack add3 comments