Joined in 2023 
82 
63 About this deal
In an ideal world that rating would be 4.5 stars, but there's no room for nuance in rating here, right? And that's actually fine, I wish Abi Palmer and this book all good things so let's go with 5. The conversational tone is so convincing that it is as if Abi Palmer is on the phone, telling the reader about her month in the sanatorium in Budapest. This had the effect of drawing me in completely.
thrillers – review roundup - The Guardian The best recent thrillers – review roundup - The Guardian
Other thoughts/things to love: the idiosyncratic description of the sanatorium in Budapest; the awkwardness of those orchestra encounters; how the book doesn't gloss over the messy and often indefinite nature of medical diagnosis; the ironic (imo) rendering of The Lightning Process; the soft, slight way she details other parts of her life (and people in her life) in the book.
A raw, beautiful, haunting, and flowing mix of diary entries, poetry, and creative non-fiction. The book chronicles the author's experience with chronic illness, pain, water, and the seemingly never-ending cycle between being unwell and (almost) well, and believed and questioned about the validity of one's disability. She includes the beautiful and the ugly. It's strange and hypnotic, but I'm into that kind of thing. The book is in snippets, often of just a paragraph or even one sentence, and cycles through its several strands: Abi’s time in Budapest and how she captures it in an audio diary; ongoing therapy at her London flat, custom-designed for disabled tenants (except “I was the only cripple who could afford it”); the haunted house she grew up in in Surrey; and notes on plus prayers to St. Teresa of Ávila, accompanied by diagrams of a female figure in yoga poses. I reviewed this as part of the shortlist for a new UK literary award, the Barbellion Prize, which will be given annually “to an author whose work has best represented the experience of chronic illness and/or disability.”) You go through life as a chronically ill person with so many different people who have so many different opinions about how your treatment should be. They’re not always useful or right. You have to build your own narrative and your own sense of what feels appropriate. You have to learn to trust your body to tell you what’s working. But that’s hard too, when your body keeps changing the rules. The longer Elin stays, the more secrets she uncovers. And when someone else drowns in a diving incident, Elin begins to suspect that there’s nothing accidental about these deaths. But why would someone target the guests at this luxury resort? Elin must find the killer—before the island’s history starts to repeat itself.
Book Review: THE SANATORIUM by Sarah Pearse - Crime by the Book Book Review: THE SANATORIUM by Sarah Pearse - Crime by the Book
A book that breaks genre, that break the flimsy lines of 'reality' and which speaks a hot and steamy truth. I love the way it plays with image, both in its words and illustrations. Abi's descriptions are visceral and right there with you. RT @ TheMysterious: We’re making plans to head out to @ HamptonsWhodun next month, Long Island’s exciting new crime fiction festival. Se… https://t.co/ra7RPgf7Fv Mar 30, 2023, 6:13 PM I have absolutely no idea what I’ve just read in Abi Palmer’s Sanatorium. It’s part memoir, part flash fiction, part fantasy, part lucid explanation of illness and pain, part metaphor for life, frequently written with the fabulous intensity of a narrative poem and always with luminous, beautiful, and occasionally stark, prose. However Sanatorium might be defined, it is written with incredible imagination, intelligence and beauty. There’s both sadness and humour so that Sanatorium feels perfectly balanced even while the narrator herself can feel slightly unhinged.DI Alex Finn, still mourning the death of his wife, Karin, from a brain tumour, investigates with DC Mattie Paulsen, who is also grappling with family issues. The Killing Choice is the second in a series that opened with The Burning Men, and is another adept police procedural, building the sense of dread to breaking point as Finn and Paulsen rush to uncover any links between the victims. This is a thoroughly immersive read which leaves the reader wondering how they would react if faced with such an unimaginable choice. As Paulsen says: “If you thought that was the only way we’d both walk away, wouldn’t you?” We are all currently trapped within our own four walls, but Sarah Pearse’s first novel shows us how much worse things could be. Elin Warner is a detective, but has taken time off after a traumatic experience. She has been invited to her brother Isaac’s engagement party in a remote hotel in the Swiss Alps. Arriving as the snow billows, she immediately feels unease – not helped by the fact that the building used to be a sanatorium (“This place… people don’t like it… superstition, I suppose,” she is told), or the acres of glass that let the mountains loom in. “Ever since she’s stepped out of the transfer bus she’s felt it – that creeping sense of something dark, threatening.” This was really great and a good example of a more surreal book told in vignettes that really worked for me.
Great Deal 
New Comment