It took me almost all of November to read this book, which I was so sure I’d love. It’s queer, got ghosts, intergenerational family shenanigans, it’s translated, it’s got murder… but the pace of it and the many, many characters never fully slotted together for me. Devastated is only a slight exaggeration. In the translator’s note, Stark mentions that he decided to translate the names of the sisters in the book to western names like Barbie and Belinda, and I kind of wish he didn’t. He mentions the transliterated versions and I genuinely think the story would have been a whole lot easier to follow with them instead of Belinda and Beverly.

There’s a lot of pain within these pages, domestic abuse, racism, nazism, poverty, corruption, infidelity, you name it. It weighs heavy but the writing and general ambiance manages to life it somewhat. 

I think my headspace contributed to the slow read of it, and if you can, I’d recommend dedicating longer chunks of time to it. I think I’d have appreciated it more had I spent longer periods with it, rather than a dozen pages here and there over the course of a month.