Book Review: "A Short Stay in Hell" by Steven L. Peck

I've gone and done it again! I've bought a book because the internet would not stop recommending it to me. A Short Stay in Hell is exactly what it says it is...short. At little over 100 pages, it makes for light reading. The book opens with a bit of a ramble from our narrator - we don't know too much just yet and then, he decides to give us some backstory. There are five people sitting in a room with the Zoroastrian equivalent of Satan and they have all been condemned to that religion's version of hell - which is one that thankfully for them, you can get out from. But our narrator has been stuck there for eons...and eons...for billions of years according to him... in a library which is endless.

Doesn't sound like hell to me! Oh but there's more...

The concept seems simple enough: find the story of your life and you can escape Hell. But of course there is a catch. This library contains any book that has been or ever could be written about any single topic, subject or person living or dead, or yet to be born. Every book is written in every possibly way meaning that there could be an infinite number of books. Our main character concedes that there may be a book about every second of their lives forwards and then another backwards, then one about each minute forwards and another backwards, then one about something else - another character talks about how they had a pet fish and thus, there could be numerous books about that forwards and then backwards. Oh and please don't forget that just like The Tower of Babel, most of these languages are simply nonsensical and so there's another catch there. The author has done a great job in making a library seem as torturous as physically possible - dare I say it: this is the only library I would not like to be locked inside.

After so many years, he falls in love with a woman called Rachel, some sort of cult begins and people start jumping from the railings of the library in hopes of reaching the bottom. Our narrator falls for many days but never sees the bottom at all. Eventually he will be told that he must fall for lightyears before he is able to see anywhere near a 'bottom' to this library. As for length, he ran but could not reach either end. When he ran back he had no story to tell - it was all the same. Eventually, finding sentences that make coherent sense brings tears to his eyes because of their beauty no matter how simplistic. Honestly, this has turned into an existential nightmare of a text. But it perhaps perfectly sums up our own modern day where we all exist trying to find ourselves, longing for other people but also knowing that perhaps it is all fleeting. Do we give up hope? Do our hearts harden? We only have to wait through all of our tribulations to find out. Genuinely, this book is conceptually terrifying, I have no idea why I've subjected myself to this.

After a while, our narrator finds himself alone for years and then for decades, there isn't really anything else to do. The new woman he met whilst she was falling has since disappeared. There's something deeply existential and terrifying about the fact that there will be long stretches of just nothing but being lonely here. Especially when (if a Mormon like the narrator) you perhaps relied more on community than you first realised. It is even more terrifying when you think about the chances of ending up here as there aren't many Zoroastrian people that one could name apart from of course, the obvious and even he wasn't religious to my knowledge. This is just one of those books where after you've finished it, when you come to that final realisation, you simply sit and stare at the wall. Your mind will be turning. I think by the end of the book I simply put my head in my hands and thought, really thought, about it. It is a horrifying extended metaphor for our own modern age.

In conclusion, I think that if you were going to ask me: in 50 years, which books will be considered classics of our day. I would answer that most likely it is going to be this one. Clever, often witty but philosophically - this book will frighten your soul.