Laura van den BergRezensionen

You know how sometimes the end can completely ruin the rest of a book? It's like that, only in this case, it's really the entire second half slowly prepares you for the way the ending is a fizzle.

I started Find Me knowing that it's ranking on goodreads was awful. But it sounded so freaking cool, that I had to do it anyway. In fact my to-read notes were: "A woman immune to the impending amnesia-plague uses it as a chance to rewrite her life, but supposedly it's terrible?" As billed.
OK, that's not fair: the first half was far from terrible. In fact, while I don't think even the first half would have wide-based appeal, I thought it was fantastic: just a touch of surrealism, beautiful language, The central discourse --the interconnection of current self and the people we've been in our lives; how memory matters (or doesn't) and whether we choose to be who we are or are shaped -- was interesting and I felt van den Berg really had a lot of new ideas on this well-worn topic and certainly a new way of showcasing. A side note on "beautiful language:" I think there's a fine line between "lyrical" and "purple prose" and often the more beautiful the language is purported to be, the less I like this book; van den Berg steers well-clear of this problem. She is a master of English. Her sentences are gorgeous, thought-provoking and clear. They build her story, rather than detract from them. It's honestly the only reason I finished part two -- she's truly superlative.

The second half, though, is rough. It's basically a travelogue through the post-apocalypse, although just how apocalyptic is kind of unclear. The problem is that without a solid plot to support everything else, the surrealism and existentialism become overwhelming and repetitive. This part both drags and is actively painful to read. I kept hoping it would get better, but it doesn't: it just ends, all of a sudden, after completely abandoning narrative and leaving a very surreal passage. I'm not even totally sure what happened in the end.

Exceptionally good stories exploring discovery and realization. It's not uncommon to find collections that are essentially the same story retold in different contexts. Here, instead, each story takes on a different angle, or level... The title story that finishes the collection is absolutely my favorite, but I suspect without the groundwork laid by the rest it wouldn't have the impact it does.

This book spends 278 pages to go absolutely nowhere. I had no idea pandemics were this boring.

Joy lives a lonely life, working 3rd shift at Stop & Shop, addicted to cough syrup and living in a basement. There is a pandemic and Joy is immune to it. She is admitted to a hospital and is treated with tests, etc to figure out why.

This book was so weird to read. It didn't really go anywhere.

this book requires a slow, slow read to absorb and reflect on what is going on. it's confusing and disorienting and unsettling and reading it makes you feel unmoored and like you have no idea what's going on and what is reality. which, of course, is just putting us directly in clare's shoes. clare, who is in a sea of grief and who doesn't have a foundation of good communication and a support system to lean on, who doesn't know how to navigate it. clare whose compass is taken away when she most needs it.

when richard, clare's husband dies, there are unfinished conversations, secrets untold, and so much for clare to process. but because of her childhood, she's not so great at facing hard thing head on, she leaves when sometimes she should stay, she turns her back when sometimes she should look. and so she is thrown, and finds herself both leaving and staying, turning around and around, coming and going. she's all over the place and she is haunted by conversations she never finished with richard, by not knowing those secrets and so wondering how much they knew each other in the end. she's haunted by him as she deals with the grief of his death, and what she knows is the upcoming death of her father.

she really is driven nearly crazy by this grief time, but it's what finally enables her to be there for her father as he is dying, what brings her back to herself in the end.

the writing is really, really good. it can be hard but it's so worth it. the way she uses the ideas of the horror movie and the tropes you find in it as a through line in the book is pretty brilliant. and then, also how that relates to the theme of seeing people in general; we are seeing what they're projecting, and there is this constant push/pull of the public persona versus the private person and who they when they're alone. how she grew up without being seen as herself and how she is so often pretending with the people she meets.

there is so much to think about here, and i love that. this is fantastic.

"Some forms of watching were designed to obliterate the subject."

"Behind every death lay a set of questions. To move on was to agree to not disturb these questions, to let them settle with the body under the earth. Yet some questions so thoroughly dismantled the terms of your own life, turning away was gravitationally impossible. So she would not be moving on. She would keep disturbing and disturbing."

"She had started to notice people almost exclusively in fragments. An arm under a desk, reaching for a fallen pencil. A back bent over a water fountain. A hand frozen under the amber beam of a lamp."

"What was it about men and humiliation? Clare had wondered...and would keep wondering as she watched killer after killer respond to humiliation with masks and knives. Was humiliation supposed to be any easier for women to take? She didn't think so, even though the world kept insisting they were built for it."

"She could go on into infinity, and yet she understood that knowing another person was not a stable condition. Knowing was kinetic, ineffable, and it had limits, but the precise location of those limits, the moment at which the knowing stopped and the not-knowing began, was invisible. You would know you had reached the border only after you had surpassed it."

"She did not know how to grieve in the context of her life."½

Well-written, and has an interesting premise in the first part, but the second part just descends into a weird mess that never resolves itself. I kept waiting for something to happen, and it never did, it just rambled around and came to an abrupt end.

The writing is amazing, but the story fell flat for me. I'll read the author's short stories for sure though.

I started this book by reading, "We Are Calling to Offer You a Fabulous Life," and fell in love with the lyrical prose.

The rest of the short stories are equally enchanting. With exotic locales, interesting characters, and a variety of themes, WHAT THE WORLD WILL LOOK LIKE WHEN ALL THE WATER LEAVES US, is a startling short story collection worth savoring.

Much more eerie and unsettling than her previous two collections. Similar to Samanta Schweblin's Mouthful of Birds.

The relationships of the protagonist, Clare, are at the heart of this rather mystifying novel about love and loss. The trouble I had with it was that I had to assume and imagine for myself that Clare loved her husband or loved her father, since it certainly wasn’t demonstrated in the text itself, at least not in language that I recognized. Clare in the present behaves inexplicably and erratically, but she also behaved inexplicably and erratically in her memories of the past, when she presumably wasn’t transformed by grief. Because I had trouble understanding Clare, I had difficulty empathizing with her, so this noel was pretty much lost on me.

A strange sickness is sweeping the country that causes people to lose their memory. The cause is unknown and any sort of cure or preventative measure is even further out of reach. But some people, like Joy, are immune. Not having much else in her life, Joy agrees to take residence in a Kansas hospital for the immune, where it's clear some sort of study is happening. There are treatments, rules, and a number of mysterious things going on inside the hospital walls. Some patients become restless and start talking about escaping--could Joy do that? If she left, where would she go? There's her birth mother, whom she's always wanted to meet. Perhaps she could track her down and find the one person who can and should love her no matter what. But no journey is easy--and even less so when the country is being ravaged by an epidemic.

Gritty. Entertaining. Thought-provoking. These are all words I would certainly use to describe this book. There are some great philosophical questions raised here though a very well-written and developed story. What makes us who we are? What defines humanity? What is ethical when it comes to medical treatment, and when is it appropriate to set those ethics aside for what is perceived to be the best interest of the patient or the broader population? Do all social experiments wind up going terribly wrong? Even with these questions on the forefront, there's nothing preachy--the author doesn't dictate the answers, rather she gives us scenarios to consider as we, the readers, make up our own minds.

Excellent stories. But they became a bit samey as they went on. Fun nonetheless but to take in small doses

These are the kind of strange, life-like stories I enjoy but likely won't remember. They address the world as it is today, the feeling of driving too fast around blind curves, the dangers we face from strangers, those we love, and ourselves and the opacity of the motivations of all three. Well-written insights make up for a few instances of sloppy editing.

3.5/5

Thanks to Netgalley and FSG for my ARC.

Laura Van Den Berg kicks off the collection with a quote by Clarice Lispector - Do you ever suddenly find it strange to be yourself? Berg's invocation really resonates by the end of the first story and wholly makes effect at the close of the collection. I Hold a Wolf by the Ears is features stories told from the perspectives of different women and Berg explores many more themes throughout the collection. Each story is really well put together with all ending in a punchy finish. That is to say that they close most often in a line that wraps things up in a unique way I have not seen in some time. The stories really do well at pulling you in and turning pages and in that way it is a very fast read but it is not light reading. It was been a very long time since I have come across a writer quite like Laura van den Berg; her writing is laser focused on moments - details - slices of life repeated and masticated and re-worn over and I found the stories to be highly original. There is something of Ray Bradbury and J.G. Ballard in these stories in the inner-monologues and inner-space explored, in the emotional effects created by way of style and structure. I Hold a Wolf by the Ears is a summer read that you will be bound to be treading over again into the fall, winter, and well into 2021. These are stories not only worth reading but rereading and living with. Also of special note is the structuring of the book itself. The stories like a great anthology are paced and set against / paired with each other in a way that feels purposeful.

I Hold a Wolf by the Ears in the best way possible treads over well worn ground but in highly unique and nuanced ways that will stick with you. Highly recommended.

There’s an episode of the podcast "Hidden Brain" about counterfactuals. Counterfactuals are basically a reimagining of past events, an answer to “what if?” and all of the events that cascade from a different choice or circumstance.

The episode is specifically about counterfactual thinking in the wake of tragedy. The woman whose story they share talks about how just before she and her husband ascended the mountain on which he would be killed in an avalanche, he told her that he had a bad feeling about the day. Together they’d decided to continue with their plans. If nothing had happened, she might not even have remembered that conversation. But because something did happen, something very bad, she reviews that instant and imagines what would have happened if she had suggested that they just skip the trip.

The Third Hotel is essentially an account of Clare’s counterfactual. What if Richard hadn’t died? What if she’d acted on the signs she’d been noticing in him for months? What if they’d both been more open with each other from the beginning of their relationship? She takes the trip to Cuba they’d planned to take together, and she replays their relationship, digging into details she and he had never addressed during their life together, trying to put the pieces together into a narrative that makes sense, and trying to come to grips with the unknowable.

The woman in the podcast was seeking some locus of control, something she could have done to change the outcome, and she focused in on that moment before their trip that seemed like a crossroads. This led, to one degree or another, to a sense that she was responsible for her husband’s death. Clare feels a similar sense of responsibility and blame but without a single moment to look at, she sees her husband’s death as an accumulation of poor choices and in some ways even a result of a flaw in her own character. She imagines not just that she could have stopped his death, but that she was the one who killed him, and neither she nor the reader can be certain that this isn’t the case.

In her blurb on the back cover, Lauren Groff writes that “you read [Laura van den Berg’s] work always a bit perturbed.” This was definitely my experience. The novel is dizzying, the line between reality and Clare’s imagination blurred. I oscillated between “I love this book!” and “Do I love this book?”

In addition to this main story, the novel addresses the three-way relationship between the author/artist/filmmaker, the story itself, and the audience. One character talks about the tacit agreement between the filmmaker and the audience of a horror film, a genre of which Clare’s husband was a scholar. “The screaming was only pleasurable because the audience knew the terror had an end,” he asserts.

Throughout the book, Clare is trying to place her life with Richard and his death into a narrative, a story with boundaries to comfort her with the knowledge that “the terror has an end.” As she traces her marriage back to its beginnings, Clare sees that the decision to marry someone in the first place carries with it the knowledge that, either through death or divorce, that relationship will end. A beginning implies an ending.

I’ve been reading everything lately with an eye for how I can use it to develop character in myself. In applying this filter to The Third Hotel, I’ve identified a primary idea with character-building potential: We can’t run from ourselves.

Like in a horror film where the victim is running frantically from a killer who walks steadily, methodically behind, no matter how fast we move whatever truth or pain or past we’re trying to evade will eventually catch up with us. It’s difficult to escape our patterns of behavior, difficult to stop running, but it happens whether we do it by choice or let it happen on its own. Sometimes (most times?) it boils down to being there in our relationships, with those we love and who love us, holding their hand, looking them in the eye, making physical contact while they cry, and allowing them to do these things for us. Our culture doesn’t encourage this simple but profound connection. It promotes independence and transactional relationships and solving problems by buying things rather than through the cultivation of family and community relationships. When it appears that our corporatocracy is encouraging us in these directions, take a closer look and you’ll generally find it’s actually an ad for a car or a credit card, an eyeliner or an app. It might look an awful lot like personal connection but peel back the veneer and it’s a ploy to get us to give away some aspect of ourselves---our thoughts, our preferences, our photos---that can be sold for someone else’s profit. And along the way we become convinced that we’re the mere sum of our parts, a collection of likes, dislikes and moments curated for public consumption.

So my takeaway is to maintain constant vigilance, to be aware always of who’s offering a solution to my particular problem and of who’s defining the problem in the first place. What are they selling and who stands to profit if I buy it? Does it bring me closer to people I love, closer to people in my community, closer to myself, or does it just offer the illusion of closeness? If all it costs me is money, it’s guaranteed to be the latter.

I enjoyed the scenery and texture of this book, which was surprisingly realistic considering the strangeness of the subject. Her descriptions of color and contrast in particular really brought me into the character's world. The main character, Clare, did leave me frustrated. She described herself as being too in her own head, but I didn't quite understand who she was inside her own head. It was like her soul really had left in body in an elevator (a scene I loved). That trait tied in well with the zombie theme – which was great – but it still left me a little unsatisfied. I think the story will stay with me a while, though, and it did make me want to visit Cuba. And maybe go to a zombie film festival.

I loved this collection of clear, harsh stories about women going through pretty serious crises. Though each followed a somewhat similar formula, each catastrophe was told so succinctly and with such style that it really worked. The stories hung together without feeling too similar or too forcibly different. I also liked that though the plots were bleak you knew the women were in the beginning or middle of something, rather than the end. (Well, maybe except the woman having her crisis at the literal end of the earth.) You believe that these women will be strong enough to pull themselves out a few chapters after their brief stories end. I can't wait to see what this writer does next.

Written 5 years ago, this book gives an eerily accurate portrayal of life during a pandemic. The disease this time is a kind of Alzheimer's on steroids. Mixed in is a description of relationships and mother-child rejection. It hasn't been rated well, but I would think with recent events people might want to revise their number of stars.

This surrealistic mishmosh is a total waste of time, and had it not been for a book group I'm in, I certainly wouldn't have finished it. It's pretentious and self-conscious and, in the end, pointless.

A recently widowed woman decides, for reasons never made clear, to go to a film festival in Cuba she had planned to attend with her husband. There, she sees him. Or thinks she sees him. Spends about half the book trying to catch up with him, and when she does, she never asks the obvious questions (Did you fake your death? And if so, why?). The reader never really knows if he was a ghost, an hallucination, an imposter, or in fact her very not-dead husband.

Then there's considerable wandering around Cuba, a train wreck, a visit to her father, dying of dementia, and a lot of other nonsense.

Don't bother. Seriously. Don't bother.

LJ review:

In her newest short fiction collection, van den Berg (The Third Hotel) serves up an assortment of complex and satisfying not–quite–ghost stories. These deceptively dense tales often visit similar territory—women, less successful younger sisters or slightly flawed daughters, who have missed some imperceptible benchmark in life—yet there is no sense of sameness. Rather, in stories ranging from “Your Second Wife,” in which a woman makes a living impersonating dead spouses, to the discomfiting “Karolina,” where in the aftermath of a Mexico City earthquake a woman’s homeless sister-in-law forces her to confront a buried history of family violence, van den Berg mines the broad overlap among loss, defeat, and horror with a deft touch, backlit by the unsettling effects of travel, natural disasters, death, and that thin membrane between the supernatural and the simply strange. The ghosts in her stories are her narrators’ better, unachieved selves, the dread embodied in the realization of how easy it is to miss life’s transitions from before to after.

VERDICT These well-crafted and intelligent stories about the many ways a life can be haunted will gratify readers who enjoy perceptive, slightly gothic tales.½

I agree with the other reviewers who wrote that the first part of the book was the best but unlike them I actually enjoyed the second half of the book. but it does take some careful reading to understand it.

I'm shelving this novel in "Books to Read Instead of Crying of Lot 49," which is a shelf that only exists in my brain. Mysterious characters, spontaneous journeys, and a little bit of horror made this a joy to read. The closing line chilled me.

Not as good as her second book. Great elements, great spookiness and weirdness but the choppy declarative prose was grating and the journey ended up being slow and hard to care about. The characters never ever compel. What’s up with all the choppy declarative prose lately?½

Wonderfully proportioned, wonderfully meta. Dark, feminist, oddly quiet given its sensationalist premise. The ending felt very real and sad and emerged from a fever-dream of a story. So you arrive at a suddenly real, clear, difficult, human place—such a great inversion of what story usual does with its big endings.