Michael's Reviews > Forty Rooms

I don't even know where to start. Forty Rooms is the most powerful, emotionally resonant novel I've read in years. Forty "is God's number of testing the human spirit," and much like "Noah's forty days and nights of rain, Moses' forty years in the desert, [and] Jesus' forty days of fasting and temptation," this novel follows our narrator through the forty rooms in which she lives throughout her life.

But even that description doesn't do it justice; all its power lies in Grushin's execution. This is a story of aftershocks - the reflection and small emotional responses that occur after the dust from life's biggest events have settled. Our narrator is unnamed, known only by her married name (Mrs. Caldwell), and that is both significant to her story and the experience of reading it. In becoming an every(wo)man of sorts, her internal monologue becomes our own: How did I get here? Is this the life I was meant to live? Is there a way to take it all back? Was it all worth it in the end? Heavy questions for sure, but the way Grushin arrives at a conclusion (if not a definitive answer) to them at the novel's end is a beautiful thing.

I could go into story specifics and dissect all of its complex layers, but with a novel like this, it would ruin the experience. Forty Rooms manages to be subtly haunting, consistently heartbreaking, sophisticated without ever feeling pretentious, and simply one of the best reading experiences I've ever had.