ROOMS FOR VANISHING

A Holocaust-inspired saga of a family exploded by grief into the multiverse.

Nadler’s unusual and profoundly sorrowful novel begins with a section called “Kindertotenlieder” (“Songs on the Death of Children”) set in 1979 London, where Sonja Alterman’s orchestra conductor husband, Franz, has gone missing. He may be on the trail of a woman he believes to be their daughter, Anya, though Anya died years ago at the age of 9. That sort of thing stops no one in this book—Sonja herself died at age 5. Her parents put her on a Kindertransport out of Vienna but received word of her death even before they and her infant brother, Moses, were murdered by the Nazis. All three of them are alive, too, in one or more incarnations—her mother, Fania, works as a masseuse in a hotel in Montreal; her father will celebrate his 100th birthday waiting for the arrival of a different version of Sonja, an 83-year-old pen pal from England; Moses becomes a grandfather himself in the year 2000, haunted by a different set of ghosts who inhabited the non-dead version of his life. Somehow, the rules of this radically splintered world are not firm enough to inspire investment in the unfolding stories. Everything is true at the same time everything is made-up. People are both there and not there, definitely coming and never showing up. DNA testing can confirm your genetic connection to a living person—but maybe that person isn’t so alive after all. As one character comments, “I did not know that the dead could have children.” This beautifully written, rather long book presents an existential question—is death real?—with many answers and no correct one.

Give up on figuring things out to best appreciate Nadler’s luxuriant storytelling and emotional intensity.