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Görünmez Otel
Yewon rüyalarında terk edilmiş bir otel görür: Sonsuz odaya açılan sonsuz anahtar… Uyandığında kendi hayatını görür: Güney Kore’de doğduğu küçük köyünde kapana kısılmış genç kadın, annesinin köhne küvette atalarının kemiklerini yıkamasını izleyerek geçirir günlerini. Her evde bu çürüyen ve parçalanmış kemikler vardır, hiç bitmeyecekmiş gibi görünen bir savaşta kaybettiklerinden kalanlardır bunlar, geçmişin hatırası. Şimdi Yewon’un erkek kardeşi Kuzey Kore sınırına yakın bir yerde asker olarak görev yapmaktadır, kız kardeşi bebeğini kaybetmiştir ve sağlığı kötüye giden annesi daima onlar için endişelidir. Kaybolmuş ve yalnız, harap olmuş bir otelin dehşet verici rüyalarıyla boğuşan Yewon, kısa süre sonra geçmişini yeni yeni anlamaya başladığı bir ülkenin, bir mirasın gerçeğini görmeye başlar.
Savaşa dair edebi korku romanı olan GÖRÜNMEZ OTEL, spekülatif bir kurgu. Han Kang’ın VEJETERYAN’ı ve Yoko Ogawa’nın HAFIZA POLİSİ romanı gibi uluslararası başarı yakalamış emsalleriyle anılan GÖRÜNMEZ OTEL, savaş, kuşaklar arası travma, küresel şiddet ve toplumsal miras bellek sorunlarına yaklaşıyor. Uluslararası kurguda yeni bir ses olan Yeji Y. Ham, sosyal korku, çarpıcı sözdizimi seçimleri ve gotik geleneğe yenilikçi bir dokunuşla yetmiş iki yıldır devam eden bir savaşın insani sonuçları hakkında derinden sarsıcı bir roman sunuyor.
Yeji Y. Ham’dan, miras travmaya, aileye ve hafızaya odaklanan; çarpıcı üslubu ve gotik geleneğe yenilikçi dokunuşuyla yetmiş iki yıldır devam eden bir savaşa dair sarsıcı bir spekülatif roman.
Savaşa dair edebi korku romanı olan GÖRÜNMEZ OTEL, spekülatif bir kurgu. Han Kang’ın VEJETERYAN’ı ve Yoko Ogawa’nın HAFIZA POLİSİ romanı gibi uluslararası başarı yakalamış emsalleriyle anılan GÖRÜNMEZ OTEL, savaş, kuşaklar arası travma, küresel şiddet ve toplumsal miras bellek sorunlarına yaklaşıyor. Uluslararası kurguda yeni bir ses olan Yeji Y. Ham, sosyal korku, çarpıcı sözdizimi seçimleri ve gotik geleneğe yenilikçi bir dokunuşla yetmiş iki yıldır devam eden bir savaşın insani sonuçları hakkında derinden sarsıcı bir roman sunuyor.
Yeji Y. Ham’dan, miras travmaya, aileye ve hafızaya odaklanan; çarpıcı üslubu ve gotik geleneğe yenilikçi dokunuşuyla yetmiş iki yıldır devam eden bir savaşa dair sarsıcı bir spekülatif roman.
304 pages, Paperback
First published March 5, 2024
59 people are currently reading
15977 people want to read
About the author
Yeji Y. Ham
3 books25 followersYeji Y. Ham is a Korean Canadian writer. She received her BA in Creative Writing from University of British Columbia and MFA in Literary Arts from Brown University. At Brown, she taught fiction workshops and completed a short story collection titled Doraesol. A part of the collection was awarded the Frances Mason Harris’ 26 Prizes in Fiction. Her debut novel, THE INVISIBLE HOTEL, is now available. She hopes that through writing, the stories of the voiceless and the forgotten would be brought out into the world.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 189 reviews
April 22, 2024
Yewon is a young woman in a life crisis – she has opportunities but doesn’t really know what to do with her life; Go to school? Get a job? Move from her little town Dalbitsori to Seoul? While all these thoughts weigh on her mind and a sort of flu dampens her appetite and humor, she is asked to drive Ms. Han, an older woman from North Korea, to the border prison where Ms. Han’s brother is being held. Yewon too has a brother who has left home to become a soldier. As the two women ride together, they interact in a very cautious and distant way, which nevertheless allows space for some intimacy. She also dreams about a hotel where things get spooky, and an atmosphere of foreboding reigns. She discovers she’s not alone there.
The most striking aspects of this slow-burner are the bones people keep in their bathrooms, bones which belong to their ancestors and which need some care, daily washing and polishing otherwise they will smell and rot. Yewon feels outright panic when going to the bathroom and she longs for a world where she can go and freely clean up, freely take a bath, which clearly indicates a collective war trauma.
The writing didn’t really appeal to me, it was cluttering without enough fluency at times. The expressions and events get more and more obscure and unintelligible towards the end and I don’t really recognize horror or even gothic horror in this work, but it’s an interesting and weird enough book all in all, which makes you find out about all kinds of stuff about two Koreas.
The most striking aspects of this slow-burner are the bones people keep in their bathrooms, bones which belong to their ancestors and which need some care, daily washing and polishing otherwise they will smell and rot. Yewon feels outright panic when going to the bathroom and she longs for a world where she can go and freely clean up, freely take a bath, which clearly indicates a collective war trauma.
The writing didn’t really appeal to me, it was cluttering without enough fluency at times. The expressions and events get more and more obscure and unintelligible towards the end and I don’t really recognize horror or even gothic horror in this work, but it’s an interesting and weird enough book all in all, which makes you find out about all kinds of stuff about two Koreas.
February 15, 2024
It took me about 70% of the way through this novel to fully understand it and what its intention was. I was going to give it a lower rating but once I got to that point I don’t think I can give it any lower than a 3 star.
I went into the Invisible Hotel thinking it was going to be a literary horror as is described on the blurb. But this book is something entirely different. This book is about war trauma, and stands along the likes of The Things We Carried and Slaughterhouse 5. I can’t help but think with the popularity of literary horror, its ‘gothicness’ is being marketed as its selling point. But the slight gothic aspects of this book, and where the books truly shines, is in its discussion of the brutality of the Korean War and generational trauma which was done so well in the last third of the book.
The Invisible Hotel is about a woman who dreams and has visions of a strange hotel with loads of locked rooms. Her brother is in the army and her mother spends her time cleaning the bones of those deceased in the town which she keeps piled up in her bathtub. It is the hotel which is the symbol of trauma in this book - rather than being the novel’s ‘horror’ in the conventional sense of the genre, the hotel is the epitome of the narrator’s unpacked trauma where each room of the hotel belongs to a victim of the brutal Korean War. The real ‘horror’ of the book is in this unpacking, where the narrator realises why she is constantly plagued by these images, what they represent and why it has caused the mental breakdown of most of the women in her family.
I loved the final moments in the novel where these threads came together, as it did take a really long time for this book to get going thematically. The image of all of the children in her family being born in the bathtub, literally on top of the bones of the dead which their mother keeps, was such a poignant metaphor for the inherited trauma that has been passed down by the generations of Korean families who never recovered from the terrors and pain of the Korean War.
I could go on and on citing trauma theory in relation to this book but I think the most important takeaway is that this book is not a horror. It is a war book that looks at trauma and is therefore preoccupied with terror, rather than horror, an important distinction in trauma theory. It doesn’t take a step into the horror genre at all but rather sits comfortably in the cannon of war trauma novels that have come before it and that I don’t think we’ve seen for years, where it shields the true brutality through its imagery and linguistic techniques.
After finishing it I’d definitely like to reread this book to see if it makes a bit more sense on a second go, but I wish I’d known a bit more about what it was doing before I started reading it as then I could have fully appreciated its story telling without spending ages trying to figure out what was going on and trying to search for the ‘gothic horror’ I was told was going to be in here. This is on reflection a really important and sad book which I think I has taught me a lot about Korean history I didn’t expect. I’d really recommend it for anyone who doesn’t mind a challenge but also wants to dip their toes into trauma literature.
I went into the Invisible Hotel thinking it was going to be a literary horror as is described on the blurb. But this book is something entirely different. This book is about war trauma, and stands along the likes of The Things We Carried and Slaughterhouse 5. I can’t help but think with the popularity of literary horror, its ‘gothicness’ is being marketed as its selling point. But the slight gothic aspects of this book, and where the books truly shines, is in its discussion of the brutality of the Korean War and generational trauma which was done so well in the last third of the book.
The Invisible Hotel is about a woman who dreams and has visions of a strange hotel with loads of locked rooms. Her brother is in the army and her mother spends her time cleaning the bones of those deceased in the town which she keeps piled up in her bathtub. It is the hotel which is the symbol of trauma in this book - rather than being the novel’s ‘horror’ in the conventional sense of the genre, the hotel is the epitome of the narrator’s unpacked trauma where each room of the hotel belongs to a victim of the brutal Korean War. The real ‘horror’ of the book is in this unpacking, where the narrator realises why she is constantly plagued by these images, what they represent and why it has caused the mental breakdown of most of the women in her family.
I loved the final moments in the novel where these threads came together, as it did take a really long time for this book to get going thematically. The image of all of the children in her family being born in the bathtub, literally on top of the bones of the dead which their mother keeps, was such a poignant metaphor for the inherited trauma that has been passed down by the generations of Korean families who never recovered from the terrors and pain of the Korean War.
I could go on and on citing trauma theory in relation to this book but I think the most important takeaway is that this book is not a horror. It is a war book that looks at trauma and is therefore preoccupied with terror, rather than horror, an important distinction in trauma theory. It doesn’t take a step into the horror genre at all but rather sits comfortably in the cannon of war trauma novels that have come before it and that I don’t think we’ve seen for years, where it shields the true brutality through its imagery and linguistic techniques.
After finishing it I’d definitely like to reread this book to see if it makes a bit more sense on a second go, but I wish I’d known a bit more about what it was doing before I started reading it as then I could have fully appreciated its story telling without spending ages trying to figure out what was going on and trying to search for the ‘gothic horror’ I was told was going to be in here. This is on reflection a really important and sad book which I think I has taught me a lot about Korean history I didn’t expect. I’d really recommend it for anyone who doesn’t mind a challenge but also wants to dip their toes into trauma literature.
March 5, 2024
A complex examination of trauma and loss centred on the Korean War that never technically ended. Yewon has abruptly left university, reeling from her father’s sudden death in a faraway country. By day she works in a convenience store but each night she returns to her mother’s house and the backwater community where she was raised. Here families practice an unusual form of ancestral rite, their bathtubs house the bones of their ancestors. The bones are washed over and over and over again: days, months, years have passed but the bones are never fully cleansed, their stench remains all-pervasive. Successive generations of women have given birth among these bones, the continuity of family, of biological connections stretching down through the ages made visible. Yewon dreams of escape but she’s overwhelmed by bizarre, recurring dreams filled with images of a hotel caught up in the throes of some cataclysmic event. For Yewon the past refuses to remain past, profusely bleeding into her present. This and a tentative connection with an aging North Korean, one of the ‘war refugees’ (pinanmin) searching for lost family, force Yewon to confront her heritage, the complicated tangle of personal and collective histories.
Korean Canadian writer Yeji Y. Ham’s debut novel conjures a South Korea riddled with half-buried anxieties, where the threat posed by North Korea is both omnipresent and part of a process of everyday forgetting - and escalating threats manifest as insta posts where K-pop idols promote nuclear survival kits as the perfect holiday gift. Ham’s narrative is ambitious and relevant, and there are a number of arresting scenes and observations, but it didn’t quite come together for me. Part of this lies in the juxtaposition of the mundane and the more horrific. The realist elements composed of Yewon’s everyday experiences, her relationships with friends and family felt awkwardly spliced with the more abstract metaphors and visions of death and inward decay. Ham’s imagery could also be striking but its force was often diminished by repetition and by the sheer length of Ham’s novel.
Thanks to Netgalley and to publisher Atlantic Books for an ARC
Korean Canadian writer Yeji Y. Ham’s debut novel conjures a South Korea riddled with half-buried anxieties, where the threat posed by North Korea is both omnipresent and part of a process of everyday forgetting - and escalating threats manifest as insta posts where K-pop idols promote nuclear survival kits as the perfect holiday gift. Ham’s narrative is ambitious and relevant, and there are a number of arresting scenes and observations, but it didn’t quite come together for me. Part of this lies in the juxtaposition of the mundane and the more horrific. The realist elements composed of Yewon’s everyday experiences, her relationships with friends and family felt awkwardly spliced with the more abstract metaphors and visions of death and inward decay. Ham’s imagery could also be striking but its force was often diminished by repetition and by the sheer length of Ham’s novel.
Thanks to Netgalley and to publisher Atlantic Books for an ARC
August 15, 2025
I tried so hard to like this book. I always want to like books about my birth nation written by fellow Koreans. Unfortunately, it dragged on so much that I would've rather had all my teeth pulled out without anesthesia. Ok, maybe not that extreme, and I must be a masochist because I actually read it twice.
I will read a book more than once for two reasons: it was so good I want to read it as many times as I can (for fiction) or use it for reference (if nonfiction), or it was so hard to get through but I REALLY want to get it. This one fell in the second category. I only tried so hard instead of DNFing because my Goodreads friend Jonas had such great things to say in his review! He's clearly a much more intelligent and far more patient reader than I 🤩
I'm so glad he loved it so much and that his appreciation of my historical and cultural DNA has grown as a result. As for me, the only thing I liked about the book is that there was a character named Mrs. Lim, which is a variation of my last name when written phonetically in English but is the same Chinese character and Korean spelling when written in Chinese and Korean.
I will read a book more than once for two reasons: it was so good I want to read it as many times as I can (for fiction) or use it for reference (if nonfiction), or it was so hard to get through but I REALLY want to get it. This one fell in the second category. I only tried so hard instead of DNFing because my Goodreads friend Jonas had such great things to say in his review! He's clearly a much more intelligent and far more patient reader than I 🤩
I'm so glad he loved it so much and that his appreciation of my historical and cultural DNA has grown as a result. As for me, the only thing I liked about the book is that there was a character named Mrs. Lim, which is a variation of my last name when written phonetically in English but is the same Chinese character and Korean spelling when written in Chinese and Korean.
October 29, 2024
3.5 stars
The blurb for Yeji Ham’s The Invisible Hotel promises “a work of literary horror in the gothic tradition.” I beg to differ on this, though not so much on the literary part of the description. It’s the horror and gothic descriptors that are a bit off target, because the book’s horror elements are mild at best and I failed to find much of anything gothic in the story. Still, Ham’s debut captivated me enough to where I didn’t mind the lack of horror, instead finding it to be, for the most part, an absorbing read about the lasting effects of the Korean War.
Plot is not Ham’s main concern here, and despite her focus on an aimless young woman in South Korea who dreams of a hotel with endless doors, whose mother spends her days washing the bones of their ancestors in the family bathtub, the book reads more like a victim statement than anything else. It’s a big, literary metaphor for how the country has never recovered from the war and how survivors are passing on the mental and emotional damage to their children, creating a communal grief and trauma.
My like for the book fluctuated while I read because the writing is so obscure, and I was often torn between not wanting to put it down and looking forward to it being over. And I’m not sure I fully understand what happened at the end, along with all that Ham was trying to say in the narrative. The book just doesn’t quite come together like the author intended.
My sincerest appreciation to Yeji Y. Ham, Zando, and NetGalley for the digital review copy. All opinions included herein are my own.
The blurb for Yeji Ham’s The Invisible Hotel promises “a work of literary horror in the gothic tradition.” I beg to differ on this, though not so much on the literary part of the description. It’s the horror and gothic descriptors that are a bit off target, because the book’s horror elements are mild at best and I failed to find much of anything gothic in the story. Still, Ham’s debut captivated me enough to where I didn’t mind the lack of horror, instead finding it to be, for the most part, an absorbing read about the lasting effects of the Korean War.
Plot is not Ham’s main concern here, and despite her focus on an aimless young woman in South Korea who dreams of a hotel with endless doors, whose mother spends her days washing the bones of their ancestors in the family bathtub, the book reads more like a victim statement than anything else. It’s a big, literary metaphor for how the country has never recovered from the war and how survivors are passing on the mental and emotional damage to their children, creating a communal grief and trauma.
My like for the book fluctuated while I read because the writing is so obscure, and I was often torn between not wanting to put it down and looking forward to it being over. And I’m not sure I fully understand what happened at the end, along with all that Ham was trying to say in the narrative. The book just doesn’t quite come together like the author intended.
My sincerest appreciation to Yeji Y. Ham, Zando, and NetGalley for the digital review copy. All opinions included herein are my own.
November 27, 2025
A chilling, surreal literary horror where bathtubs of bones serve as a metaphor for the scars left behind after war.
March 6, 2024
A hauntingly beautiful read that navigates the complexities of generational trauma and the long lasting effects of war on humanity. A sombre, reflective telling that there are some traumas and some hurts that go so deep, we can never really escape them.
This book grew on me the more I read, I felt utterly consumed as I read page after page. If you have generational trauma within your own family, you will relate to this story. Ham does a really incredible job creating a truly haunting atmosphere. Despite not being traditionally “scary” per se, this was all consuming. Like a thick fog, you don’t know what’s ahead but you desperately want to find out all the while the feeling dread grows ever so slowly into your psyche.
This is really something special for a debut. I will be keeping my eyes on what this author may have in store for us in the future.
This book grew on me the more I read, I felt utterly consumed as I read page after page. If you have generational trauma within your own family, you will relate to this story. Ham does a really incredible job creating a truly haunting atmosphere. Despite not being traditionally “scary” per se, this was all consuming. Like a thick fog, you don’t know what’s ahead but you desperately want to find out all the while the feeling dread grows ever so slowly into your psyche.
This is really something special for a debut. I will be keeping my eyes on what this author may have in store for us in the future.
April 16, 2024
The Invisible Hotel is a promising book centered on generational trauma following the Korean War. The story in itself follows Yewon, a young adult living in Dalbitsori (moonlight) village struggling with lots of different things: her studies, wanting to move to Seoul, wanting to have a social life, haunting dreams about a hotel, and her mother’s constant washing of bones in their bathtub. During the book, we accompany Yewon as she experiences North Korea’s militaristic threat at a time her brother is in the military service and while she drives a North Korean woman to see her brother.
I liked the book. I think it had a good message. But I struggled with three things: Yewon, the writing, and the time setting.
Yewon is all over the place and utterly empty at the same time. To quote the great Bilbo Baggins, she felt “thin, sort of stretched, like butter scraped over too much bread.” It was difficult to empathize with her because she was very empty as a person. She seemed to exist because other people made her exist: she had a friend because the friend contacted her, she did things because her mother/sister arranged it, she had a job because a woman came to give her the job, she found a guy because the guy came to look for her. And, when she was alone, she was basically just thinking about the many things she worried about doing while she actively didn’t do them.
The writing. Oh, well. I am not a writing-over-substance kind of person, but I didn’t like it. It felt so convoluted, so confusing. I *think* Ham was trying to go for a stream-of-consciousness type of narration, but it was chaotic. It was confused. You’d have paragraphs where every sentence had nothing to do with the previous one and it was just unappealing after a while.
Now, about the time period. I read recently that authors should aim to create timeless pieces and this idea was a recurrent thought I had when reading this book. Ham’s debut novel has been published in 2024 yet the story takes place in 2018 (which isn’t mentioned at all throughout the book). I was actually living in Seoul during the specific events that happened in this story and, maybe because of this, they felt very dated?
Speaking about North Korea, I was very pleased with the North Korean character. She was very cool, I loved everything about her. However, I do want to say this is more leading into the ‘North Korea is awful’ rhetoric. But many bits of it were really touching (for me but this may be because of what I do).
Great idea, but not the best execution. 2.5*
I liked the book. I think it had a good message. But I struggled with three things: Yewon, the writing, and the time setting.
Yewon is all over the place and utterly empty at the same time. To quote the great Bilbo Baggins, she felt “thin, sort of stretched, like butter scraped over too much bread.” It was difficult to empathize with her because she was very empty as a person. She seemed to exist because other people made her exist: she had a friend because the friend contacted her, she did things because her mother/sister arranged it, she had a job because a woman came to give her the job, she found a guy because the guy came to look for her. And, when she was alone, she was basically just thinking about the many things she worried about doing while she actively didn’t do them.
The writing. Oh, well. I am not a writing-over-substance kind of person, but I didn’t like it. It felt so convoluted, so confusing. I *think* Ham was trying to go for a stream-of-consciousness type of narration, but it was chaotic. It was confused. You’d have paragraphs where every sentence had nothing to do with the previous one and it was just unappealing after a while.
Now, about the time period. I read recently that authors should aim to create timeless pieces and this idea was a recurrent thought I had when reading this book. Ham’s debut novel has been published in 2024 yet the story takes place in 2018 (which isn’t mentioned at all throughout the book). I was actually living in Seoul during the specific events that happened in this story and, maybe because of this, they felt very dated?
Speaking about North Korea, I was very pleased with the North Korean character. She was very cool, I loved everything about her. However, I do want to say this is more leading into the ‘North Korea is awful’ rhetoric. But many bits of it were really touching (for me but this may be because of what I do).
Great idea, but not the best execution. 2.5*
September 12, 2025
Amid the ruins of war, a young woman tries to find her life’s purposes after her family suffers multiple tragedies.
The hotel dream sequences add a disturbing, surreal edge to her journey which is a chilling contrast to her fragile hope for something better.
Beautifully bleak and deeply human.
The hotel dream sequences add a disturbing, surreal edge to her journey which is a chilling contrast to her fragile hope for something better.
Beautifully bleak and deeply human.
March 16, 2024
A riveting plotline that goes quite ethereal yet can be challenging to grasp for its hazy slow-moving premise and monotonous writing. I followed Yewon in her daily tale waking up after a recurring dream of an abandoned hotel with infinite keys and infinite rooms to a task she received of driving Ms. Han; a mysterious and aging North Korean refugee to visit her brother at a distant prison. This new job somehow unraveled the uncanny emotion that quietly trapped inside Yewon about her family and the scenes she usually sees at home; of her mother who continuously washing the bones of their ancestors in their decrepit bathtub.
The execution traversed too haunting with Yewon’s cloud of musings in the first half but started to make sense on the later part. It wrestled with bunch of familial distress— of her mother’s ritual that troubling Yewon’s sanity, the conflict and tragedy involving her sister as well about her brother; Jaehyun who is now stationed near the North Korean border. An alarming exploration to Yewon’s quest in escaping the terror of her dream that go interlacing with a provoking observation on fear and grief, of war and generational trauma, on estrangement, death as well of one’s fragility and self acceptance.
Nothing that horror as per labeled to me but it was so distinguished for the theme as I find the symbolism in between Yewon’s dream and her reality to be so exceptionally plotted; it feels light yet so dense and emotionally grabbing in prose. Loving the friendship subplot that giving me an insight to Yewon’s dynamic. An intriguing last chapter that lingered in its surreal overtone— a revelation and the unsettling truth that hovered me with a slight hangover from the after-read.
Thank you Pansing Distribution for sending me the proof edition to review!
The execution traversed too haunting with Yewon’s cloud of musings in the first half but started to make sense on the later part. It wrestled with bunch of familial distress— of her mother’s ritual that troubling Yewon’s sanity, the conflict and tragedy involving her sister as well about her brother; Jaehyun who is now stationed near the North Korean border. An alarming exploration to Yewon’s quest in escaping the terror of her dream that go interlacing with a provoking observation on fear and grief, of war and generational trauma, on estrangement, death as well of one’s fragility and self acceptance.
Nothing that horror as per labeled to me but it was so distinguished for the theme as I find the symbolism in between Yewon’s dream and her reality to be so exceptionally plotted; it feels light yet so dense and emotionally grabbing in prose. Loving the friendship subplot that giving me an insight to Yewon’s dynamic. An intriguing last chapter that lingered in its surreal overtone— a revelation and the unsettling truth that hovered me with a slight hangover from the after-read.
Thank you Pansing Distribution for sending me the proof edition to review!
April 18, 2024
I found this a really confusing read and I’m not sure it made much sense to me. There’s some interesting imagery and it’s effective in showing the ongoing effects of trauma from war. I ended up reading it slowly because I just couldn’t get into it. An unsatisfying read for me.
August 4, 2024
this book is absolutely something I will randomly remember from time to time forever
March 17, 2024
We were born inside the hotel. All of us were born here and given a key to our rooms.
Upon starting Yeji Y. Ham's The Invisible Hotel, I wasn't quite sure why I'd decided to pick it up: while I love speculative fiction, I tend to struggle with 'magical realism', or in other words, with unexplained happenings that aren't rooted in the world of the text itself. And The Invisible Hotel is definitely more magical realist than speculative. Set in contemporary South Korea, its narrator, Yewon, feels trapped in the tiny village of Dalbit, where she was born, and where her mother still washes the bones of her ancestors in the bathtub. Yewon is weary of the smell of the rotting bones, and terrified of the expectation that when she has children of her own, she too will give birth in the bathtub. But even as she plots her escape, she starts to dream of a hotel that also manifests the horrors of war, and of her brother, who is stationed near the North Korean border. I never usually get it when other reviewers praise a text for 'vibes', or say they never quite understood what was happening but enjoyed being immersed in a particular kind of feeling. The Invisible Hotel, however, resonated in that way for me, with its imagery of locked hotel rooms, a clothesline full of windows, and an elderly man who is building a house of doors. It made me reach for folktale references like Baba Yaga and her house on chicken legs, but it also felt like a more successful version of Elisa Shua Dusapin's Winter in Sokcho, another novel about a young South Korean woman tethered to her hometown that trades in vibes but which never hit emotional heights for me. The Invisible Hotel is, as other reviewers have pointed out, too long, but I don't think it's seriously so: much of the power and horror of this novel comes from the way that the same things keep coming back.
I received a free proof copy of this novel from the publisher for review.
Upon starting Yeji Y. Ham's The Invisible Hotel, I wasn't quite sure why I'd decided to pick it up: while I love speculative fiction, I tend to struggle with 'magical realism', or in other words, with unexplained happenings that aren't rooted in the world of the text itself. And The Invisible Hotel is definitely more magical realist than speculative. Set in contemporary South Korea, its narrator, Yewon, feels trapped in the tiny village of Dalbit, where she was born, and where her mother still washes the bones of her ancestors in the bathtub. Yewon is weary of the smell of the rotting bones, and terrified of the expectation that when she has children of her own, she too will give birth in the bathtub. But even as she plots her escape, she starts to dream of a hotel that also manifests the horrors of war, and of her brother, who is stationed near the North Korean border. I never usually get it when other reviewers praise a text for 'vibes', or say they never quite understood what was happening but enjoyed being immersed in a particular kind of feeling. The Invisible Hotel, however, resonated in that way for me, with its imagery of locked hotel rooms, a clothesline full of windows, and an elderly man who is building a house of doors. It made me reach for folktale references like Baba Yaga and her house on chicken legs, but it also felt like a more successful version of Elisa Shua Dusapin's Winter in Sokcho, another novel about a young South Korean woman tethered to her hometown that trades in vibes but which never hit emotional heights for me. The Invisible Hotel is, as other reviewers have pointed out, too long, but I don't think it's seriously so: much of the power and horror of this novel comes from the way that the same things keep coming back.
I received a free proof copy of this novel from the publisher for review.
January 12, 2024
Yewon has dreams about a hotel where doors and windows come and go. These dreams appear whether she is asleep or not, leading me to believe they are more on the line of being displaced in time and space. An elderly man who is building an edifice of doors and windows in the woods is somehow linked to the dreams. As she travels through the dreams, Yewon see signs of people who were interrupted while eating and are now gone, and there is the stench and detritus of death.
The time period must be around 2011: Kim Jong Jun has just become supreme Leader of North Korea, and fears of aggression are experienced in South Korea. The legacies of grief, war, and tradition, are themes that are explored as Yewon experiences the death of her father, her brother being sent to guard the northern border, and her mother taking care of the bones.
I found this to be a hard book to follow due to my inability to appreciate magical realism. I also felt that calling this Gothic horror—a favorite genre of mine—was a push. However, the metaphor of tending the bones was an ingenious way to explore the themes of generational trauma and war.
I would like to thank NetGalley and Zando Publishers for the opportunity to read and review this book.
The time period must be around 2011: Kim Jong Jun has just become supreme Leader of North Korea, and fears of aggression are experienced in South Korea. The legacies of grief, war, and tradition, are themes that are explored as Yewon experiences the death of her father, her brother being sent to guard the northern border, and her mother taking care of the bones.
I found this to be a hard book to follow due to my inability to appreciate magical realism. I also felt that calling this Gothic horror—a favorite genre of mine—was a push. However, the metaphor of tending the bones was an ingenious way to explore the themes of generational trauma and war.
I would like to thank NetGalley and Zando Publishers for the opportunity to read and review this book.
February 1, 2024
In one word - HAUNTING.
There is a fog like feel to this novel. I instantly felt a chill, mystery, something deeply and heavily unknown. You float along with the words so peacefully placed and to a patient rhythm. A mother, her daughters and son.
We follow them day to day and the matter of fact tone reminds us that we all have secrets, weights in our lives that can often feel like burdens.
What unravels is a cryptic history and a story of neverending healing.
There is a fog like feel to this novel. I instantly felt a chill, mystery, something deeply and heavily unknown. You float along with the words so peacefully placed and to a patient rhythm. A mother, her daughters and son.
We follow them day to day and the matter of fact tone reminds us that we all have secrets, weights in our lives that can often feel like burdens.
What unravels is a cryptic history and a story of neverending healing.
February 23, 2024
“It was as if time were leaving me behind. Taking everyone else away while I sank and kept on sinking.”
Yeji Y. Ham’s speculative horror is based on the life of a women as she adjusts to the shifting identity long after the Korean war. Yewon keeps seeing a hotel in her dreams. One with infinite keys and rooms where she is desperate to escape. In reality she still live with her mother and works at a convenience store. Her mother obsessively washes the bones of her ancestors in their bathtub, a tradition everyone does so not to forget those who were lost to war. Now her sister has recently experienced a tragedy, her brother is stationed near the North Korean border and her mother’s health is declining fast. Yewon’s dreams of this hotel are leading her towards an uncomfortable truth.
Told through Yewon’s experiences, the story was quite harrowing to read. There are many themes and perspectives of struggle explored which left Yewon confused as to what they meant. Through her dreams of this hotel, she realises the bigger picture and her role within her family.
At times this became quite emotional to read. the descriptions of war, the metaphors behind the day to day tasks her mother was carrying out, her explanations of why she was seeing so many despairing events occur, it felt like a build up to some things people can relate to gong through similar circumstances.
I would say this book is in the same vein as reading the works of Han Kang and Yoko Ogawa. It will leave you thinking about it long after you have finished it.
Many thanks to @netgalley for a copy of this book.
Yeji Y. Ham’s speculative horror is based on the life of a women as she adjusts to the shifting identity long after the Korean war. Yewon keeps seeing a hotel in her dreams. One with infinite keys and rooms where she is desperate to escape. In reality she still live with her mother and works at a convenience store. Her mother obsessively washes the bones of her ancestors in their bathtub, a tradition everyone does so not to forget those who were lost to war. Now her sister has recently experienced a tragedy, her brother is stationed near the North Korean border and her mother’s health is declining fast. Yewon’s dreams of this hotel are leading her towards an uncomfortable truth.
Told through Yewon’s experiences, the story was quite harrowing to read. There are many themes and perspectives of struggle explored which left Yewon confused as to what they meant. Through her dreams of this hotel, she realises the bigger picture and her role within her family.
At times this became quite emotional to read. the descriptions of war, the metaphors behind the day to day tasks her mother was carrying out, her explanations of why she was seeing so many despairing events occur, it felt like a build up to some things people can relate to gong through similar circumstances.
I would say this book is in the same vein as reading the works of Han Kang and Yoko Ogawa. It will leave you thinking about it long after you have finished it.
Many thanks to @netgalley for a copy of this book.
January 4, 2024
Reading the synopsis I was interested in the gothic horror aspect of the book. I have to say that I do not think that matches the genre correctly. Though I’m not sure what would describe it best.
This reminds me of an indie film that a lot of work has been put into but you don’t fully grasp the meaning of everything. At least, for me. And that is okay! I’m sure for another reader this book may reach them deeper than it did for me.
I didn’t hate it. But also didn’t love it.
Thanks to NetGalley, Zando Press and Yeji Y Ham. I have written this review voluntarily.
This reminds me of an indie film that a lot of work has been put into but you don’t fully grasp the meaning of everything. At least, for me. And that is okay! I’m sure for another reader this book may reach them deeper than it did for me.
I didn’t hate it. But also didn’t love it.
Thanks to NetGalley, Zando Press and Yeji Y Ham. I have written this review voluntarily.
October 24, 2023
Spooky October #7
It would've been quite an effective study of the ways in which post-war trauma warps temporality had it been at least a hundred pages shorter. As it is, one can feel the metaphors being belabored and stretched beyond their welcome. On the other hand, I did learn new things about South Korea - I didn't know it was quite a militarized society as depicted in the novel, and that the militarization takes its toll in that way. Additional star for that.
It would've been quite an effective study of the ways in which post-war trauma warps temporality had it been at least a hundred pages shorter. As it is, one can feel the metaphors being belabored and stretched beyond their welcome. On the other hand, I did learn new things about South Korea - I didn't know it was quite a militarized society as depicted in the novel, and that the militarization takes its toll in that way. Additional star for that.
June 17, 2024
2.5 / too confusing for far too long :( honestly not sure what else to say about it as I had such a hard time tracking. thanks to NetGalley for the arc!
June 6, 2024
This debut novel from Canadian / Korean author Ham, is strong on visual imagery. Narrated by University student Yewon, the opening paragraphs concern her mother washing their ancestors’ bones in the family bathtub.
These images, which Ham describes periodically, along with certain motifs of gothic and horror fiction, give the novel something of a false sense of identity. Rather, the theme is one of generational trauma, and of anxiety about what lies ahead.
Yewon lives with her mother in a small town in rural South Korea, studies at the local University, though is considering moving to Seoul, or even Sydney to continue her degree. Her friends have moved away, as has her older sister, who is married. He younger brother has just been conscripted to the army and is stationed on the border with the north. His safety is a constant cause for worry.
Concern only grows when a woman, Mrs Han, a refugee from North Korea, pays Yewon to take her to the prison where her brother resides, whom Ms. Han hasn’t seen for decades.
Yewon dreams frequently of a mysterious hotel where the front desk has piles of abandoned notes, a decrepit restaurant where diners stare at empty plates while dust settles, and a swimming pool, still with swimmers, but overtaken by thick green algae.
It’s a fascinating novel, but the two strands of Yewon’s life, the dream and reality, don’t quite connect. I could pick it for a debut novel, but there is enough here to indicate that Ham will be a writer to watch. It would have been easy to root the story in reality, but in experimenting with aspects of horror she has produced something special.
Its theme is firmly embedded in war; it may end, but the legacy of fear lives on.
These images, which Ham describes periodically, along with certain motifs of gothic and horror fiction, give the novel something of a false sense of identity. Rather, the theme is one of generational trauma, and of anxiety about what lies ahead.
Yewon lives with her mother in a small town in rural South Korea, studies at the local University, though is considering moving to Seoul, or even Sydney to continue her degree. Her friends have moved away, as has her older sister, who is married. He younger brother has just been conscripted to the army and is stationed on the border with the north. His safety is a constant cause for worry.
Concern only grows when a woman, Mrs Han, a refugee from North Korea, pays Yewon to take her to the prison where her brother resides, whom Ms. Han hasn’t seen for decades.
Yewon dreams frequently of a mysterious hotel where the front desk has piles of abandoned notes, a decrepit restaurant where diners stare at empty plates while dust settles, and a swimming pool, still with swimmers, but overtaken by thick green algae.
It’s a fascinating novel, but the two strands of Yewon’s life, the dream and reality, don’t quite connect. I could pick it for a debut novel, but there is enough here to indicate that Ham will be a writer to watch. It would have been easy to root the story in reality, but in experimenting with aspects of horror she has produced something special.
Its theme is firmly embedded in war; it may end, but the legacy of fear lives on.
April 21, 2024
"This wasn’t my pain, but I felt it anyway."
The Invisible Hotel is a dark literary fiction set in korea about intergenerational trauma. It has some historical fiction elements in the form of flashbacks of the korean war and previous generations, but is primarily set in present day.
I think this book was very mismarketed which did it a disservice. I went into this expecting literary horror, and while this book is dark, I would not consider it horror at all. At about 60% I nearly DNF'd just because I had no clue where it was going. I'm glad I didn't because I do think the author crafted a really special piece of work, but I also understand the people who did DNF.
This is about Yeweon, a young woman living in a small village (Dalbit) in Korea with her mother. In this village the people follow a tradition where they keep the bones of their deceased loved ones in their bathtub and continuously wash them over and over every single day.
Yeweon wants to get out of Dalbit and away from the bones which consume her and her mothers lives, but she is plagued by dreams of a hotel.
She also has a brother who is in the army at the North Korean border, and a sister who is struggling with the loss of her baby.
It was definitely interesting seeing the story progress and Yeweon learning how to cope with the pain she was born with through the trauma of her ancestors. I was shocked to find that I almost cried at the end.
However, I can't say that this was a page turner or that I felt a lot of personal enjoyment or satisfaction out of reading this. The first 60% was quite repetitive, and without an indication of where the story was going, I felt lost.
*Thank you to netgalley and the publisher for the free ARC in exchange for an honest review!
The Invisible Hotel is a dark literary fiction set in korea about intergenerational trauma. It has some historical fiction elements in the form of flashbacks of the korean war and previous generations, but is primarily set in present day.
I think this book was very mismarketed which did it a disservice. I went into this expecting literary horror, and while this book is dark, I would not consider it horror at all. At about 60% I nearly DNF'd just because I had no clue where it was going. I'm glad I didn't because I do think the author crafted a really special piece of work, but I also understand the people who did DNF.
This is about Yeweon, a young woman living in a small village (Dalbit) in Korea with her mother. In this village the people follow a tradition where they keep the bones of their deceased loved ones in their bathtub and continuously wash them over and over every single day.
Yeweon wants to get out of Dalbit and away from the bones which consume her and her mothers lives, but she is plagued by dreams of a hotel.
She also has a brother who is in the army at the North Korean border, and a sister who is struggling with the loss of her baby.
It was definitely interesting seeing the story progress and Yeweon learning how to cope with the pain she was born with through the trauma of her ancestors. I was shocked to find that I almost cried at the end.
However, I can't say that this was a page turner or that I felt a lot of personal enjoyment or satisfaction out of reading this. The first 60% was quite repetitive, and without an indication of where the story was going, I felt lost.
*Thank you to netgalley and the publisher for the free ARC in exchange for an honest review!
October 21, 2025
Arka kapak konusu, kapağı ve ismi fantastik diye bağırırken içi dümdüz insanların ilişkisini anlatan bir kitaptı. İstediğim şeye ulaşamadığım için keyif alamadım...
June 30, 2025
While many readers might be surprised by the lukewarm Goodreads rating for The Invisible Hotel, Ham’s debut novel is a deep exploration of trauma, memory, and the lingering scars of war. Reminiscent of Han Kang’s immersive prose, the book explores Yewon’s life, a young woman living in the South Korean village of Dalbit.
Yewon’s world is one of loss. Her father had died in a fire abroad, her sister grapples with divorce and grief, and her brother serves in the ever-escalating conflict with North Korea. Her mother, stoic and resilient, embodies the weight of history. Yet, the most unsettling element of Dalbit lies within the homes themselves: bathtubs filled with the bones of ancestors, a constant reminder of the past’s cost. Yewon’s mother washes the bones every day, caring for them and for the people they represent. When she picks up a bone, she calls it “he” or “she”, depending on whom it belonged to. The act of washing the bones is a central ritual, both grotesque and poignant. It might represent the villagers’ attempt to both honour their dead and cleanse themselves of the past’s horror. Yewon, who participated in the ritual as a child, is not repulsed by them, their rotten smell that is pervasive in the entire house and her clothes. She sees the bathtub as a place of death, but it is also a place where new life emerges, as the women in Dalbit also give birth in the bathtub, on top of the bones. I found the metaphor of the bones fascinating, and, as you read, you grasp the meaning of the ritual: the bones symbolize the generational war trauma passed down, a burden Yewon will have to choose to accept or reject. The bathtub is where the people that died lay, safe in death. Yewon fights the burden of carrying her ancestors’ trauma, but, as she learns the purpose of the ritual, she gets to understand that the bones are hers to carry, hold, cherish and pass over.
Back to the plot, having just lost her job, Yewon agrees to drive Ms Han, a North Korean refugee to Yeoju, where she would visit her brother in prison (a few hours away from Dalbit). Their trip to the prison is also symbolic, I believe. She tries, fails, and tries again to connect with Ms Han, who is traumatised by her past and ravaged by panic attacks. Their relationship shows that trauma doesn't know borders and people in both North and South Korea suffer the same. Yeown doesn’t distinguish between her family and Ms Han’s pain, and she takes it upon herself to recognise it and pass it on to the next generation. Loss transcends national borders, we learn. The trauma of war is a universal language, forcing Yewon to confront the suffering on both sides of the divide. This shared burden becomes a crucial element in the novel's message.
There is no real plot apart from Yewon's struggle to come to terms with her father’s death, rebuild her idea of the future, that she put on hold (she was supposed to go to college), and figure out who she is and what she should do next. She is lost and grapples with multiple complex threats at the same time: her grief, her sister’s pain, her brother’s uncertain future, and her mother’s suffering that she hides in cleaning the bone. Yewon’s internal struggle manifests in a recurring dream - a labyrinthine hotel with infinite rooms, devoid of windows and escape. This unsettling space, reminiscent of Kafka’s castle nightmare, becomes a powerful metaphor for the burdens she carries. The old man who haunts the dream - but also the village of Dalbit when awake, ostracised by the villagers but tolerated for the doors and windows he carries to build something he lost in his past, further reinforces the themes of entrapment and yearning for freedom. There might be freedom, as Yewon learns, as the hotel has a window. Will she find it, though?
While lacking a traditional plot, The Invisible Hotel offers an atmospheric, immersive experience. The short, sharp sentences build tension, drawing the reader into Yewon’s oppressive reality. The book’s horror lies in the exploration of psychological torment and the weight of history. It feels almost claustrophobic at times, there seems to be no escape from the hotel, no space to breathe, and no hope.
This book is not for the faint of heart, but, for those seeking a literary experience that analyses the complexities of grief, memory, and the enduring legacy of war, this debut from Ham is a rewarding exploration. Don’t be discouraged by the online ratings. If you enjoy atmospheric horror steeped in metaphor and are willing to tackle difficult themes, The Invisible Hotel offers an immersive and haunting reading experience.
Yewon’s world is one of loss. Her father had died in a fire abroad, her sister grapples with divorce and grief, and her brother serves in the ever-escalating conflict with North Korea. Her mother, stoic and resilient, embodies the weight of history. Yet, the most unsettling element of Dalbit lies within the homes themselves: bathtubs filled with the bones of ancestors, a constant reminder of the past’s cost. Yewon’s mother washes the bones every day, caring for them and for the people they represent. When she picks up a bone, she calls it “he” or “she”, depending on whom it belonged to. The act of washing the bones is a central ritual, both grotesque and poignant. It might represent the villagers’ attempt to both honour their dead and cleanse themselves of the past’s horror. Yewon, who participated in the ritual as a child, is not repulsed by them, their rotten smell that is pervasive in the entire house and her clothes. She sees the bathtub as a place of death, but it is also a place where new life emerges, as the women in Dalbit also give birth in the bathtub, on top of the bones. I found the metaphor of the bones fascinating, and, as you read, you grasp the meaning of the ritual: the bones symbolize the generational war trauma passed down, a burden Yewon will have to choose to accept or reject. The bathtub is where the people that died lay, safe in death. Yewon fights the burden of carrying her ancestors’ trauma, but, as she learns the purpose of the ritual, she gets to understand that the bones are hers to carry, hold, cherish and pass over.
Back to the plot, having just lost her job, Yewon agrees to drive Ms Han, a North Korean refugee to Yeoju, where she would visit her brother in prison (a few hours away from Dalbit). Their trip to the prison is also symbolic, I believe. She tries, fails, and tries again to connect with Ms Han, who is traumatised by her past and ravaged by panic attacks. Their relationship shows that trauma doesn't know borders and people in both North and South Korea suffer the same. Yeown doesn’t distinguish between her family and Ms Han’s pain, and she takes it upon herself to recognise it and pass it on to the next generation. Loss transcends national borders, we learn. The trauma of war is a universal language, forcing Yewon to confront the suffering on both sides of the divide. This shared burden becomes a crucial element in the novel's message.
There is no real plot apart from Yewon's struggle to come to terms with her father’s death, rebuild her idea of the future, that she put on hold (she was supposed to go to college), and figure out who she is and what she should do next. She is lost and grapples with multiple complex threats at the same time: her grief, her sister’s pain, her brother’s uncertain future, and her mother’s suffering that she hides in cleaning the bone. Yewon’s internal struggle manifests in a recurring dream - a labyrinthine hotel with infinite rooms, devoid of windows and escape. This unsettling space, reminiscent of Kafka’s castle nightmare, becomes a powerful metaphor for the burdens she carries. The old man who haunts the dream - but also the village of Dalbit when awake, ostracised by the villagers but tolerated for the doors and windows he carries to build something he lost in his past, further reinforces the themes of entrapment and yearning for freedom. There might be freedom, as Yewon learns, as the hotel has a window. Will she find it, though?
While lacking a traditional plot, The Invisible Hotel offers an atmospheric, immersive experience. The short, sharp sentences build tension, drawing the reader into Yewon’s oppressive reality. The book’s horror lies in the exploration of psychological torment and the weight of history. It feels almost claustrophobic at times, there seems to be no escape from the hotel, no space to breathe, and no hope.
This book is not for the faint of heart, but, for those seeking a literary experience that analyses the complexities of grief, memory, and the enduring legacy of war, this debut from Ham is a rewarding exploration. Don’t be discouraged by the online ratings. If you enjoy atmospheric horror steeped in metaphor and are willing to tackle difficult themes, The Invisible Hotel offers an immersive and haunting reading experience.
May 6, 2024
everyone is plagued by war. not a single human being has escaped it. war has been here since the dawn of time; it has been, and always will be present as long as humanity exists.
and here we have the whole of korea, divided into the north and south. war has separated both countries, and war still plagues its citizens, generation after generation. they will never truly be able to escape it, to be rid of it.
a father, deceased in an unfortunate accident. a mother, obsessed with cleaning the bones of their dead ancestors. a sister, going through a divorce. a brother, newly enlisted into the military regiment closest to the border. a family tradition, to clean these said bones in the bathtub, and to give birth in the same bathtub, with bits and pieces piercing into the skin. the ultimate sacrifice, they say— a way to remember one’s ancestors and what they have been through just so one could live today. all these, the main character has witnessed, and is horrified as she experiences it every single day.
in her dreams, she unwillingly enters the invisible hotel, and is trapped for as long as she is unconscious. she has no control as she watches others inside who are also trapped and are desperate to escape.
this book is not just the “literary horror” it is marketed to be. it is so much more— it is a book of war trauma, of generational trauma, of living in constant fear, and of trying (pretending) to live some semblance of a life anyway, despite the burdens from generations past. it is such a deep and immersive book. i give it 🌟🌟🌟🌟 #niquereviews
[spoilers ahead]
i think the invisible hotel is a metaphor for all the accumulated trauma that has been passed down through decades from previous generations. every person has their own key, their own traumas to unlock and to face behind their own door. i find that a very powerful image.
also, the cycle of trauma is present in the bathtub metaphor. the dead is remembered, and because their experiences are remembered, the trauma is inherited. over and over again, from death into life.
[end of spoilers]
and here we have the whole of korea, divided into the north and south. war has separated both countries, and war still plagues its citizens, generation after generation. they will never truly be able to escape it, to be rid of it.
a father, deceased in an unfortunate accident. a mother, obsessed with cleaning the bones of their dead ancestors. a sister, going through a divorce. a brother, newly enlisted into the military regiment closest to the border. a family tradition, to clean these said bones in the bathtub, and to give birth in the same bathtub, with bits and pieces piercing into the skin. the ultimate sacrifice, they say— a way to remember one’s ancestors and what they have been through just so one could live today. all these, the main character has witnessed, and is horrified as she experiences it every single day.
in her dreams, she unwillingly enters the invisible hotel, and is trapped for as long as she is unconscious. she has no control as she watches others inside who are also trapped and are desperate to escape.
this book is not just the “literary horror” it is marketed to be. it is so much more— it is a book of war trauma, of generational trauma, of living in constant fear, and of trying (pretending) to live some semblance of a life anyway, despite the burdens from generations past. it is such a deep and immersive book. i give it 🌟🌟🌟🌟 #niquereviews
[spoilers ahead]
i think the invisible hotel is a metaphor for all the accumulated trauma that has been passed down through decades from previous generations. every person has their own key, their own traumas to unlock and to face behind their own door. i find that a very powerful image.
also, the cycle of trauma is present in the bathtub metaphor. the dead is remembered, and because their experiences are remembered, the trauma is inherited. over and over again, from death into life.
[end of spoilers]
January 31, 2025
While I enjoyed the “hotel” aspect of this book, everything else felt like a drag. There were more interesting characters in the book that would have carried it better.
January 23, 2024
First of all, thanks to Netgalley and Zando Projects for letting me read an eARC of The Invisible Hotel. I enjoyed reading The Invisible Hotel; it was not what I expected it to be. The horror came from the disjointed, surreal structure of the narrative and the observations about how the trauma has affected everyone around and including Yewon. The novel is an easy recommendation for anyone who loves a slow-burning horror story with surreal elements.
June 26, 2025
trauma .... what a difficult thing to talk about, let alone write about and try to synthesize into a story that conveys how you talk about it but you also don't talk about it at the same time (you know what i mean?)
i think it took a little while for the book to settle in but it all clicks together in the last 100 pages so it's a bit of a slowburn. admittedly i am not familiar with korean history so i would like to give it a re-read when i know a bit more. i think the idea is there but the prose didn't really click with me and i felt that it was just a little jumbled and melted together. perhaps that was the point !
someone please read this so we can discuss
i think it took a little while for the book to settle in but it all clicks together in the last 100 pages so it's a bit of a slowburn. admittedly i am not familiar with korean history so i would like to give it a re-read when i know a bit more. i think the idea is there but the prose didn't really click with me and i felt that it was just a little jumbled and melted together. perhaps that was the point !
someone please read this so we can discuss
Read
March 9, 2024Many thanks to NetGalley and Zando Press for a review copy of this book in exchange for my honest feedback.
When does a war begin? When does it end? If a war was to start in your country tomorrow, and end in three years, would things go back to normal straight away? Would that be it? Sure, things would get better on a larger scale, optimism would get the wider community back on their feet. But on an individual level, you, your friends, your family, would be left with both physical and mental scarring that never truly goes away. The Invisible Hotel, with its magnifying glass hovering over the Korean War of the early 1950s, attempts to describe and show this feeling of war’s largely forgotten rippling effect.
In this book we follow a young woman, Yewon, as she and her family attempt to navigate their lives alongside the ripples and threats of war that ebb and flow between North and South Korea. Kim Jong Un has just become the supreme leader in the North, and the futures of Yewon and her family are teetering on the fence of this new ruler’s whims and wants. Yewon’s brother is enlisted in the South Korean army. He is currently stationed on the border that separates the two countries. Her sister is attempting to start a family, her goals not really having a set direction, and the sister’s estrangement from their mother begins to strain on Yewon’s individuality. The mother, however, is the inner core around which the rest of the family are built. She felt the effects of the Korean War first hand. Yewon’s grandparents passed first-hand accounts of war onto the mother, creating a trauma that can never be completely stopped. This trickle-down effect is even more true, even more real, when things were never truly settled, as is the case with North and South Korea. Random uprisings and threats of further outbreak have scattered the last 70 years for both North and South Korean civilians.
Subtleties of this generational trauma are signalled throughout the book, as Yewon cannot escape the shackles of parenthood that her mother has placed her under. Is it restraint that Yewon’s mother uses or is she just protecting her child? We see Yewon meet a few characters in the book that give off energies that are either standoffish or secretive. Ms Han can be unassuming and hard to grasp. Mrs Lim, Yewon’s neighbour, is curt and snappy. The old man pops up on numerous occasions, in what feel like dreams and apparitions. These dreams extend beyond just the old man however, as Yewon is consumed, asleep and awake, by visions of a hotel. The hotel contains doors and windows. Some locked for now. Others just needing to be walked through. People can be seen floating through the rooms. Bones scattered. Screams echo. This hotel, and the non-familial characters in the book, act as signs of trauma, fear, and anxiety of the unknown. There is a tetchiness that goes hand-in-hand with living in and around a warzone – one that cannot be experienced from just witnessing war from afar.
While the unhighlighted subtleties of war that the book attempts to describe do work, and do on most occasions give a genuine raw kick to the overall reading experience, the tools being used – the dreamed hotel, the older village members – can often times feel too manufactured within the story. There is a genuineness to the story that cannot be denied or questioned, but certain elements of the narrative feel too naked, too on-show. There are parts of the book where one can see the author attempting to move the pieces of the puzzle in a heartfelt attempt to highlight a certain message or thing. This obviousness does take away from the overall reading experience. There is potential for it to take the reader out of the story and dampen the impact of those raw moments that the book contains. Seeing the blueprints of something can take away the magic of the design.
This book is categorised as a horror. On its own I do not value or enjoy putting art into a tightly packed box, but here it feels especially off the mark. Yes, there is horror to the book. It is a book that navigates around war. There is bound to be horror with these pages. But labelling it in the genre of horror takes away from what is completely real throughout. Now more so than ever.
The Invisible Hotel is quiet without ever been disinteresting or forgettable. It is a book that says a lot in exactly what it doesn’t say. Literary manoeuvres can be too frontal at times, but I feel that Yeji Y. Ham finds a way to pull the majority of what this book aims for together in the end.
When does a war begin? When does it end? If a war was to start in your country tomorrow, and end in three years, would things go back to normal straight away? Would that be it? Sure, things would get better on a larger scale, optimism would get the wider community back on their feet. But on an individual level, you, your friends, your family, would be left with both physical and mental scarring that never truly goes away. The Invisible Hotel, with its magnifying glass hovering over the Korean War of the early 1950s, attempts to describe and show this feeling of war’s largely forgotten rippling effect.
In this book we follow a young woman, Yewon, as she and her family attempt to navigate their lives alongside the ripples and threats of war that ebb and flow between North and South Korea. Kim Jong Un has just become the supreme leader in the North, and the futures of Yewon and her family are teetering on the fence of this new ruler’s whims and wants. Yewon’s brother is enlisted in the South Korean army. He is currently stationed on the border that separates the two countries. Her sister is attempting to start a family, her goals not really having a set direction, and the sister’s estrangement from their mother begins to strain on Yewon’s individuality. The mother, however, is the inner core around which the rest of the family are built. She felt the effects of the Korean War first hand. Yewon’s grandparents passed first-hand accounts of war onto the mother, creating a trauma that can never be completely stopped. This trickle-down effect is even more true, even more real, when things were never truly settled, as is the case with North and South Korea. Random uprisings and threats of further outbreak have scattered the last 70 years for both North and South Korean civilians.
Subtleties of this generational trauma are signalled throughout the book, as Yewon cannot escape the shackles of parenthood that her mother has placed her under. Is it restraint that Yewon’s mother uses or is she just protecting her child? We see Yewon meet a few characters in the book that give off energies that are either standoffish or secretive. Ms Han can be unassuming and hard to grasp. Mrs Lim, Yewon’s neighbour, is curt and snappy. The old man pops up on numerous occasions, in what feel like dreams and apparitions. These dreams extend beyond just the old man however, as Yewon is consumed, asleep and awake, by visions of a hotel. The hotel contains doors and windows. Some locked for now. Others just needing to be walked through. People can be seen floating through the rooms. Bones scattered. Screams echo. This hotel, and the non-familial characters in the book, act as signs of trauma, fear, and anxiety of the unknown. There is a tetchiness that goes hand-in-hand with living in and around a warzone – one that cannot be experienced from just witnessing war from afar.
While the unhighlighted subtleties of war that the book attempts to describe do work, and do on most occasions give a genuine raw kick to the overall reading experience, the tools being used – the dreamed hotel, the older village members – can often times feel too manufactured within the story. There is a genuineness to the story that cannot be denied or questioned, but certain elements of the narrative feel too naked, too on-show. There are parts of the book where one can see the author attempting to move the pieces of the puzzle in a heartfelt attempt to highlight a certain message or thing. This obviousness does take away from the overall reading experience. There is potential for it to take the reader out of the story and dampen the impact of those raw moments that the book contains. Seeing the blueprints of something can take away the magic of the design.
This book is categorised as a horror. On its own I do not value or enjoy putting art into a tightly packed box, but here it feels especially off the mark. Yes, there is horror to the book. It is a book that navigates around war. There is bound to be horror with these pages. But labelling it in the genre of horror takes away from what is completely real throughout. Now more so than ever.
The Invisible Hotel is quiet without ever been disinteresting or forgettable. It is a book that says a lot in exactly what it doesn’t say. Literary manoeuvres can be too frontal at times, but I feel that Yeji Y. Ham finds a way to pull the majority of what this book aims for together in the end.
November 19, 2024
I think this novel, for all its flaws, would have been much better as some sort of TV series.
I will say that the first half or so, I absolutely despised this book. I think the themes it attempts to incorporate feel misplaced, and each sentence tries to carry too much weight while simultaneously holding nothing within it. The story itself was hard to follow, with at least four different moving pieces that did not come together until the last pages, and even then, the writing felt like it was missing large chunks of important details.
The last fifty to 100 or so pages are what is pushing me to give this book two stars, and not one. The way that things line up for Yewon feels cathartic, then horrifying, and back again in circles is very well written for a novel that did not originally have that going for it. I think the ending was fitting, but the part that sold me on the ending was the full-circle moment regarding her father and his broken lens cap. I really enjoyed this moment in particular, and it almost made up for all my other problems with the novel.
There are a lot of good moments and themes contained within the book, but they are poorly executed. Each theme feels like it was thrown in a blender without any liquid, and so they have become this weird, dry mass of nothing instead of a coherent (and delicious) book smoothie.
I would recommend this book to someone who prefers themes and conversation topics in a novel over a consistent plot.
I will say that the first half or so, I absolutely despised this book. I think the themes it attempts to incorporate feel misplaced, and each sentence tries to carry too much weight while simultaneously holding nothing within it. The story itself was hard to follow, with at least four different moving pieces that did not come together until the last pages, and even then, the writing felt like it was missing large chunks of important details.
The last fifty to 100 or so pages are what is pushing me to give this book two stars, and not one. The way that things line up for Yewon feels cathartic, then horrifying, and back again in circles is very well written for a novel that did not originally have that going for it. I think the ending was fitting, but the part that sold me on the ending was the full-circle moment regarding her father and his broken lens cap. I really enjoyed this moment in particular, and it almost made up for all my other problems with the novel.
There are a lot of good moments and themes contained within the book, but they are poorly executed. Each theme feels like it was thrown in a blender without any liquid, and so they have become this weird, dry mass of nothing instead of a coherent (and delicious) book smoothie.
I would recommend this book to someone who prefers themes and conversation topics in a novel over a consistent plot.
February 21, 2024
The Invisible Hotel is a hauntingly imaginative premise emerges woven in with several heavy topics such as generational trauma, grief, politic, war and miscarriage. This story follows our protagonist, Yewon who just recently lost her father, and her brother is in the army and close to the border, while her sister is away from home leaving her to deal with her grief, and her mother who seems to care about the bones in bathtub. Yewon then meets an elderly North Korean refugee whom she drives to the prison outside the city where a long lost relative of hers can be found. Our protagonist are suffering from repeating nightmare in which she visiting a luxury hotel with loads of locked rooms, and keys and inhabited by a strange guests which most of them are injured or dying. The nightmare settings and the concept reminds me a lot of Hotel De Luna, Korean drama.
This evocative & brilliant story was presented in an slow engaging storyline (although confusing at times) while also have reality and dreams intertwined that makes the story a lot more interesting. I honestly didn't fully understand and confused of the book's intention at first. But as I wander through the story, I'm in love with the author deep exploration of heavy topics in an exceptionally subtle manner. The author exposes these emotions in all of their raw and earth-shattering reality. There is this lyrical quality in her writing that emphasizes the emotional isolation, grief that Yewon and her family feels after her father’s death. The magical realism element in the book came naturally, I still a bit confused about the hotel but I would say this book has a lot of layers and symbolism.
The hotel is more like a symbol of Yewon's untold trauma and related to Korean War, which explains a lot about the hotel's guests. The horror element in here is not depend on the settings nor guests itself, but instead the brutality of the War between North and South Korea and the aftereffect. The long and continuation tradition of keeping bones in bathtubs, and also giving birth in miasmic bones of their ancestors so they can never forget their ancestor's trauma, and agony and always remember the war.
"𝘼 𝙨𝙚𝙘𝙤𝙣𝙙, 𝙙𝙚𝙖𝙩𝙝. 𝘼 𝙢𝙞𝙣𝙪𝙩𝙚, 𝙙𝙚𝙖𝙩𝙝. 𝙄𝙣 𝙩𝙝𝙚 𝙉𝙤𝙧𝙩𝙝, 𝙙𝙚𝙖𝙩𝙝, 𝙞𝙣 𝙚𝙫𝙚𝙧𝙮 𝙙𝙞𝙨𝙩𝙖𝙣𝙘𝙚 𝙤𝙛 𝙩𝙞𝙢𝙚"
Overall, despite its flaws (I admit there's a bit poor execution in several parts), the books offers the deep insight into family, political and post-war effect. The constant fear, anxiety and trauma after the war is compelling and heartbreaking to read. This is definitely not an easy read, so I would not recommend this to just anyone, Giving this solid 4 ⭐️ thank you Netgalley and Zanda Press for the review copy.
This evocative & brilliant story was presented in an slow engaging storyline (although confusing at times) while also have reality and dreams intertwined that makes the story a lot more interesting. I honestly didn't fully understand and confused of the book's intention at first. But as I wander through the story, I'm in love with the author deep exploration of heavy topics in an exceptionally subtle manner. The author exposes these emotions in all of their raw and earth-shattering reality. There is this lyrical quality in her writing that emphasizes the emotional isolation, grief that Yewon and her family feels after her father’s death. The magical realism element in the book came naturally, I still a bit confused about the hotel but I would say this book has a lot of layers and symbolism.
The hotel is more like a symbol of Yewon's untold trauma and related to Korean War, which explains a lot about the hotel's guests. The horror element in here is not depend on the settings nor guests itself, but instead the brutality of the War between North and South Korea and the aftereffect. The long and continuation tradition of keeping bones in bathtubs, and also giving birth in miasmic bones of their ancestors so they can never forget their ancestor's trauma, and agony and always remember the war.
"𝘼 𝙨𝙚𝙘𝙤𝙣𝙙, 𝙙𝙚𝙖𝙩𝙝. 𝘼 𝙢𝙞𝙣𝙪𝙩𝙚, 𝙙𝙚𝙖𝙩𝙝. 𝙄𝙣 𝙩𝙝𝙚 𝙉𝙤𝙧𝙩𝙝, 𝙙𝙚𝙖𝙩𝙝, 𝙞𝙣 𝙚𝙫𝙚𝙧𝙮 𝙙𝙞𝙨𝙩𝙖𝙣𝙘𝙚 𝙤𝙛 𝙩𝙞𝙢𝙚"
Overall, despite its flaws (I admit there's a bit poor execution in several parts), the books offers the deep insight into family, political and post-war effect. The constant fear, anxiety and trauma after the war is compelling and heartbreaking to read. This is definitely not an easy read, so I would not recommend this to just anyone, Giving this solid 4 ⭐️ thank you Netgalley and Zanda Press for the review copy.
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