A Short Stay in Hell

A really fun short read. I had a really great time reading this and couldn't put it down once I started! 100% recommend this book. If you're just getting into reading it's a very manageable length and doesn't overstay it's welcome.

Great first book to read after not reading for a while. Finished in a few hours. Definitely thought provoking but also drab at the same time. Definitely could have delivered more but for a short story, very interesting concept.

Great read, I highly recommend.

Okay I finished this in a day. It’s only around 100 pages and it moves pretty quickly. Honest thought…. It was okay. I mean, it’s a cool concept and some of it was pretty clever, but I don’t really understand the all the hype around it? “The life changing, existential novella…” Not quite. Again. A cool concept, but that’s about it. It reminded me of a book I read years ago called SUM by DAVID EAGLEMAN. But that book was much, much better! It’s also a short one, but gave many different scenarios of what could be waiting in the afterlife. If I were to recommend a book like this. I’d recommend SUM. So yeah. It’s okay. Read it if you want to. But you’d be better off reading SUM.

5 stars. A fantastic read. A beautiful concept and brilliantly told. I wanted it to go on and on and on. Like the library.

Soren always believed that when he died he would be reunited with his loved ones who had passed before him. However, when the day eventually arrives he is cast into a hell by a God he does not know. Here is finds himself faced with the prospect of living forever in a vast library, his only escape is to find the story of his life in a library that contains every book that has ever been written and every book that could ever be written. A Short Stay in Hell is one of the best and most haunting descriptions of hell I have ever read. When Soren first arrives he does not quite realise the enormity of the task a head of him and embraces the challenge of finding his story. As he works his way through the Library he finds miles of shelving full of books of jibberish, only occasionally coming across a word or sentence that makes sense. It is only now he truly begins to comprehend how many books he needs to look through before he finds one that might tell the story of his life. As the years pass in hell Soren makes friends and enemies and falls in and out of love while slowly losing all meaning and context to his existence. He loses any sense of place as everywhere becomes a uniform monotony, slowly sending him to the brink of madness. This was one of the best short stories I have read in a long time and haven't been able to stop thinking about it since. This is no firey hell with the screams of the damned. This is a hell where an individual loses all meaning to their existence, to die in this hell is to wake up again the next day faced with the same impossible and empty task, it truly is a descent into madness and I loved it.

Existential dread and a great take on the human condition. I’d recommend any person who loves to explore hope and dread to read it.

First time reading this type of genre. Ut wasnt what i was expecting, but I found it interesting. I wish the ending was more final but, that's the point I guess.

I was very excited to read this book but found it lacking. Felt very pretentious and frustrating. Pointless with no clarity or closure, probably the point of the book as it's about being in hell.

I've never been a huge reader but besides being an amazing book, it sparked the desire in me to read more, and I've already read three more books this week! It was a fantastic book and I'm still thinking about it, although reluctant to read again because it's a bit of a mind f 🫨 I've recommended it to everyone.

I really enjoyed this book. I read about it as "one of the scariest depictions of hell" but I actually found it kind of hopeful in an odd way, the protagonist goes through so much, but it really seems to be about the adage that "any man can make a heaven of hell, or hell of heaven" it's about finding contentment where you are, that it's often the endless searching for better that brings us to suffer.

Fascinating read. I’m not a big book reader but I couldn’t put it down. I felt it could’ve been more developed but otherwise a very memorable read

This book is truly short and sweet - if the sweet you are looking for is exhistential dread and a thought provoking read. It really lingers with you even after it’s finished, I truly recommend this - all of us have wondered at some point what happens in the afterlife, so being touched by this story is inevitable.