Ratings2
Average rating4
This book is truly amazing, it's about trauma and how people cope with it or not. It's also about the distance between motivation and perception, between what one means to do and how it is seen.
It's about coming “home” and all the ghosts that we are and that we carry with us, and as someone who has a very fraught relationship with their hometown my did it hit close to home.
It's also a character study in which the story reveals itself slowly, removing one layer of veil at a time. Small details turn out to be important so that every word fells both natural and deliberate. The story is told from multiple point of view going back and forth through time which gives it a somewhat ethereal feeling, like you're the ghost in it.
The characters are fantastic, if you carry any trauma with you, you are sure to relate or resonate with at least one of them, for me it was Betty.
The notes from the translator at the end were great for me too because I was a bit weirded out by the decision to give some of the characters such typically English names (though I did like how it shows just how universal the heart of the story really was).
I received a free ebook ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review from Netgalley and Europa Publishing, I don't think it affected my enjoyment of this book at all.