Der Holocaust als uchronischer Moment, der für jedes der Mitglieder der Familie Alterman eine alternative Zukunft erzeugt, in der sie nahe und fern, lebendig und tot sind wie Schrödingers Katze. Von jedem von ihnen wird die Geschichte ab dem Moment der Trennung erzählt, ein mögliches und doch unmögliches Leben, wie die ewige Warte Arnold am Wiener Bahnhof zeigt, wo er hofft, seine Tochter wiederzusehen, die mit dem Kindertransport nach England geschickt wurde. Ein ergreifender Roman, weil er vom Schrecken der Vergangenheit und der Hoffnung auf die Zukunft durchdrungen ist, die hätte sein können. Nachdem ich die letzte Seite umblättern, habe ich mir gedacht: „Sie sind alle tot, und doch sind sie alle tot“, und doch fällt es mir extrem schwer, sie gehen zu lassen.

This is not a novel for the faint-hearted! I have spent quite a while thinking about how to review this book and am still no further forward so here goes!
A Jewish family is torn apart in WWII. The novel follows each family member through a series of their relections and musings across a number of different realities and timelines so that the reader is never sure what is real and what isn't. It is very cleverly written and explores the impact of grief, sometimes in a way that was difficult to follow. This book took me over a week to read which is an indicator of how heavy a read it was. Am I glad I read it? Yes. Did I really understand it - the jury is still out!

his is an extraordinary novel of depth filled with emotion on occasions it’s quite surreal.
It looks at the story of a number of families who are linked by the loss of a child. Some children are lost during the holocaust some die in childhood from medical conditions but all leave behind parents desperately missing their loved ones and struggling to come to terms with their loss. This is a loss that isn’t just something that happens immediately after the child no longer exists but something that the mother or father feels throughout life even as they become elderly there’s something missing in their lives. This is a recurrent theme throughout the novel that of loss yearning and of reunions
This author has a distinct writing style which reads like a stream of consciousness as if the narrator is thinking without any plans to what they’re going to say i’m struggled a bit to get into it at the start but once I was used to it I enjoyed it .
You offer has a sometimes poetic writing style, a sentence I particularly loved was“People in pain exist in two places at once within the pain which is an endless place a place of incompressible death and they are also in a place where the pain is vanished a future Place” . as a chronic pain suffer this sentence really resonated with me.
There are elements to this book which are quite surreal. There is a clear image of a elderly Czeck mother for example living in a house that is falling down around her with trees growing in the inside of the house
On multiple occasions in the story there’s ghosts which some people can see and some can’t
This is an unusual book and the different elements place it strongly within the literary fiction category it’s not a simple holocaust memorial novel, although of course there are elements of the book that are just this. Ultimately it’s a novel about what it means to be human and how much we love our families. There’s a deep abiding feeling of family within this novel and understanding of the complexities of our relationships.

I recommend this novel to those who like a primarily character based novel with historical and literary elements

I read an early copy of the novel on NetGalley UK in return for an honest review because of this they were Formatting errors which made it this harder to read then it might otherwise have been it’s a testament to how strong the novel is that I persevered

The novel is published in the UK on the 21st of August 2025 by Pan MacMillan
This review will appear on StoryGraph, Goodreads, and my book blog bionicSarahSbooks.wordpress.com. After publication will also appear on Amazon UK.

Rooms for Vanishing by Stuart Nadler is an evocative and haunting exploration of loss, survival, and the psychological impact of war on a Jewish family fractured by time and tragedy. Set against the backdrop of the Holocaust and its aftermath, this book spans decades and continents, following the Alterman family as they navigate their separate, sorrow-filled futures, haunted by grief and the ghosts of their loved ones.

The story is told through the experiences of four family members—Sonja, Fania, Moses, and Arnold—who each grapple with the loss of their relatives in different ways. The novel begins with Sonja, sent to Britain on the Kindertransport during the war, under the belief that her family will follow. However, they never do, and she is left to build a life with her husband and daughter, only to experience further tragedy when her daughter dies at a young age. Her husband's disappearance after he believes he has seen a grown-up version of their daughter adds another layer of loss to her life.

Fania, the mother, lives in Montreal, where she encounters a woman who may be a doppelganger of herself or someone who moved into their family’s Viennese apartment after their deportation. Meanwhile, Moses, the son, is haunted by the ghost of his best friend and makes his way back to Prague, hoping to make peace with the past. Lastly, Arnold, the father, is 99 years old and receives a message from an Englishwoman claiming to be his daughter, Sonja, leading him to question the fate of his family.

Each family member is trapped in their own version of the past, with memories and ghosts continuing to shape their existence. The novel navigates a maze of grief, blending memory and reality, leaving readers to wonder if these characters are truly alive or simply living in the madness of their grief. Nadler’s writing is both beautiful and unsettling, capturing the aching hope that something, anything, might bring these fractured lives back together. The exploration of the psychological effects of war and the trauma of survival is profound and deeply moving.

Nadler’s narrative spans time periods and locations, with societal upheaval always at the heart of each character’s journey. The book’s haunting atmosphere is punctuated by moments of hope and despair, leaving readers to reflect on the devastating impact of war and the complex nature of human resilience. The story is at times hard to bear, but its emotional depth and exquisite prose make it a remarkable achievement.

What kept me turning the pages was the sense that, somehow, despite the overwhelming odds, the Alterman family might reconnect. That hope, however fragile, made the novel impossible to put down. Rooms for Vanishing is a poignant meditation on grief, survival, and the ghosts that linger long after the bodies are gone.

Read more at The Secret Book Review.