Stuart Nadler delivers a disorienting, elegiac family saga: the Altermans, torn apart by the Holocaust, drift across decades and continents, each convinced they’re the sole survivor. Through ghostly echoes, doppelgangers, and fractured realities, Nadler unfolds a lyrical meditation on grief that blurs the line between memory and magic. It’s a deeply felt, genre-bending masterpiece, haunting, heart-shaking, and impossible to forget.

Thank you NetGalley and Pan MacMillan for this eCopy to review.

I just finished Rooms for Vanishing by Stuart Nadler, and it’s one of the most haunting, ambitious novels I’ve read this year. A family epic that bends time, memory, and reality, it left me both emotionally drained and deeply moved.

The story follows the Alterman family, Jewish refugees fractured by war and grief. From Vienna to London, Montreal to Prague, each member believes they’re the sole survivor yet their lives echo and overlap in strange, almost magical ways. Sonja searches for her missing husband in London. Fania meets her doppelgänger in a hotel basement. Moses is haunted by the ghost of his best friend. Arnold receives a letter from a woman claiming to be his long-lost daughter. It’s a novel where the dead might still be alive, and grief reshapes the very fabric of reality.

What I loved:

🕯️ The writing is exquisite. Nadler’s prose is lyrical, immersive, and emotionally charged. It reads like a dream you’re not sure you want to wake from.

🧩 The structure is daring. Multiple timelines, shifting realities, and ghostly echoes make this a novel you feel as much as you follow.

💔 The emotional weight is profound. It’s about exile, loss, and the impossible hope for a different history. The characters are beautifully drawn, each carrying their own version of survival.

🌍 The settings are rich and atmospheric. From war-torn Vienna to modern-day Montreal, each location feels steeped in memory and meaning.

While the narrative occasionally felt elusive, I think that’s part of its magic. It’s not a puzzle to solve, it’s a meditation on grief, identity, and the stories we tell to stay alive.

If you enjoy literary fiction that explores the boundaries of time, memory, and emotional truth, Rooms for Vanishing is a deeply rewarding read.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for an advance copy of this book.

Hard as it is to get into, read and even understand, I would absolutely recommend this book.

I rate this book highly and was very much moved by many parts of it but I must say there are a lot of things which make it a bit of a slog to read. I thought it was quite jumbled. In the acknowledgements the author thanks someone for untangling his tangles and I can only say if this is what it is like untangled then I can't imagine what it was like before.

There are a lot of characters and a lot of things happen to them in their different lives. I would say the book is too long and some some lives/parts are much better than others. I got many of the characters mixed up and in some parts of the book I really was not sure what was going on. There are standout characters like Sofiez and Hermann for example. They are both lively and funny and memorable. Arnold is also memorable and the parts when he goes to the train station are heart wrenchingly moving.

The book is written in quite a matter of fact way and this means that sometimes the horror of what happens, to Moses in his mother's village for example. is like a punch in the stomach.

I learned a lot from this book about the after lives of camp survivors - I have not read any books about how people lived in the aftermath of what they had been through. Just because you survived such atrocities doesn't mean that you life afterwards is without hardship and pain. I was also unaware of the events depicted in Czechoslovakia. I knew that there was anti Semitism in France and Ukraine and The Netherlands but I did not realise that it was widespread in other European countries too.

I feel that at some point I should re-read this book and I expect that will be a "better" overall experience but in some ways it is too bleak to want to read again.

I found this book difficult to read. Had to read a couple of the chapters a few times to try to get to grips with the characters.

I like to read books for escapism, not for the slog that I found in this book.

Sorry not the book for me.

Thank you Netgalley for letting me try to read this book.

Poignant, heartbreaking story of diaspora after WWII and the devastating and haunting impact grief and loss has on their lives. Told from different but linked narratives.. Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the advance copy.

This haunting, lyrical novel explores the enduring grief of parents who’ve lost children—through illness, war, or the Holocaust. Spanning generations, it captures how absence reshapes lives long after loss, echoing into old age. The narrative is dreamlike, often surreal, with ghosts, collapsing houses, and fractured memories blurring past and present. The author’s stream-of-consciousness style takes getting used to, but its emotional depth is undeniable. A line about pain existing in two places especially struck me, as someone living with chronic pain. More than a historical novel, it’s a meditation on love, memory, and what it means to be human.
Recommended.

A very haunting novel about the power of grief and the longstanding legacy of the Holocaust. I did enjoy the book; the characters were all fascinating and the interweaving of their lives and different outcomes was really clever - rather like having "sliding doors" moments. There was also a huge emotional pull in reading it- the idea that you can take one route in life but find yourself haunted by the "what might have beens" of another life is very thought provoking too. I would have given the book 5 stars but for the fact that I did find the jumping around of characters at the start a little confusing.

An admirable idea for a heartbreaking tale but I'm afraid there were so many alternative realities going on within each character's timelines I found it all very confusing. I really read it, properly paid attention but once I got to about 60% in I just got bored of trying to figure out what was actually going on. Far too clever for my good.

Okay, this isn't going to be an easy review to write. I can absolutely see why people love Rooms for Vanishing - there are fascinating characters and an intriguing story that spans generations. I must admit, however, that it was far too literary for me. This is entirely my own fault. I shouldn't have requested to review it. It has made me realise that I resent the time and energy required to read a book where the writing style challenges me too much. I ploughed on but it simply wasn’t for me. I am sorry.
There is definitely a market for this book. It will suit quite a few people I know. Even if they don't love all the versions of the story (there are four) they will certainly engage with at least one of the versions of life for the Alterman family after 1945. I think the book will do well and maybe even become a classic. I won’t mind being wrong.

This is a difficult read. I nearly gave up so many times but carried on simply because I believe it’s not possible for me to have a real opinion of a book if I don’t read it all. There are parts of this book that were emotional and I enjoyed reading those. But the rest of it was written in a style that I really don’t enjoy. It was a confusing read, repetitive in places and overall I really disliked this book. Others may enjoy it but it wasn’t the right book for me.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publishers for the ARC in return for my honest and unbiased opinion.

This was so hauntingly beautiful, the poignancy in the writing had me reading this on mostly on the verge of tears. Four versions of the fate of a Jewish family torn apart during the Second World War in Vienna in which a different member of the family survives. None of these fates are perfect, they’re all scarred by the wounds inflicted upon their family and still seeking each other in various heartbreaking ways. The author doesn’t attempt to pick a fate to be true or to achieve an impossible happily ever after but allows them all to exist simultaneously in a metaphor which does beautifully wrap it up. I loved reading it.

Stuart Nadler's "Rooms for Vanishing" is a deeply moving and richly textured novel that probes the long-term trauma of the Holocaust on one Viennese Jewish family, the Altermans. Instead of a straightforward narrative, the writer offers us a prismatic, brain-twisting epic in which each family member (Sonja, Fania, Moses, and Arnold) has a separate, isolated future, each of whom thinks they are the only survivor.

The novel skillfully combines elements of realism with mysticism, including ghosts, doppelgängers, and a dissolving line between life and death. The prose of the author is frequently characterized as lush and elegiac, conveying a mood of beautiful mournfulness that pervades every page. Though the fractured structure and lack of plot can be difficult, it effectively reflects the broken reality of its characters. "Vanishing Rooms" was less concerned with what had occurred than with the way loss warps perception and the futile desire for an alternative history. It is a sad and unnerving meditation upon loss, family ties, and the insistent reverberations of traumatised history.

I agree with other reviewers here - this is a challenging book telling a complex, poignant, haunting story. Worth persevering with, certainly. But a heavy read nonetheless.

I really really struggled with this book. I wanted to like it. I wanted to finish it but despite returning to it on several occasions I just could not take to the writing style at all. Many apologies to the author and publisher. I'm sure there will be many other readers the book appeals to.
Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the opportunity to read an advance copy. All opinions are my own.

The message that this book gives to me is that if you have a series of traumatic events in your life, together with not really knowing what is happening, anything can happen, or at least it can appear to happen.
It was not always clear whether what was being spoken/written about was happening or not.
The characters were interesting, the settings well described, the events mysterious.
I am glad that I have read this book. It makes me understand a lot more about the time period, amd that my small woes, are incomparable to millions of woes happening in the world, even today.
I received an advance review copy for free, and I am leaving this review voluntarily.

Unfortunately not for me. I started it three times and could not get into it. Confusing and a bit frustrating.

This is a challenging book, taking the reader around the world and examining the themes of love, loss, hope and despair as viewed through several generations of one famiky.

There are several engaging parts which made me share the tragedy of loss and the hope of love. However, the story of some characters are less compelling and those sections became hard to read, making me put the book down. This is a book you shouldn't put down and expect to pick back up knowing where you left off..

I'd call this a worthy read.

I tried to stick with this book which deals with a family from Czecha split up during the holocaust and follows their lives across the years after seperation.
It deals with how people compartmentalise their lives, consigning tragedies and memories into seperate rooms, in order to make sense of them,
Unfortunately for me I found it difficult to read and seperate the characters realities from their imaginings, though perhaps this was the point.
In the end I stopped reading after I had completed about 60% of the book hence the two star rating. Not that I believe it is a bad book but just that it was not a book for me.

I struggled with this book as I could not decide what was real and what was not. It is the tale of a Jewish family from Vienna - the Altermans - whose lives are haunted by the impact of the Second World War. Each are haunted by the losses of their family members and grief colours their lives. Each feels that they are the only survivors but each seeks to find or are haunted by the presence of other family members.

Each is alone in their separate futures, which may or may not exist, each a new version of themselves and each suffering from profound loss. Each wish for a future where their unspeakable loss has not happened.

It is a study of the impact of grief and hope.

I found it hard to read - beautifully written and poignant but hard.

I am very sorry but I cannot finish this book. I have restarted it to try again, three times.
I cannot get on with the changes in the main characters and the regular references to happenings in the past or future.
I have listened to a comment “Life is too short to struggle on with a book you dislike. There are many others!”