The Gothic Borscht Belt: A Book Review of The Hotel Neversink

by Kelli Huggins

I read a lot, some might say compulsively. So imagine my surprise that one of my favorite 2019 releases was set in the Catskills.

Adam O’Fallon Price’s novel The Hotel Neversink (Tin House Books, 2019) tells the story of the rise and fall of a fictional hotel in Liberty and the similar trajectory of the family who ran it. Each chapter moves through time focusing on a different family member or hotel employee (a few recur, but you never get to spend much time with any of them). 

Price presents a gothic Catskills. Children disappear from the hotel or the surrounding town, the mystery of which haunts people for decades and provides a narrative thoroughfare for the book. The family faces internal schisms and the hotel itself slowly succumbs to the real-life decline of the Borscht Belt resorts. In Price’s hands, the Catskills are eerie and foreboding. The woods and rural seclusion that made the southern Catskills a famed Jewish getaway are simultaneously facilitating evil. I’ve written before about the Catskills as inspiration for horror stories and Price similarly recognizes that narrative potential of this setting, albeit in a more subtle way. 

The chapters function like individual, interconnected short stories. One of the standout chapters is written in the style of a traditional Borscht Belt comedy act. The comedian, however, is having a total emotional breakdown on stage, and the reader is put in the place of the audience, uncomfortably waiting to see how bad it will get. The stories are often dark, many dealing with themes of violence, dysfunction, and loss. Characters fight against one another, but the biggest enemy is time, a larger metaphor for the Borscht Belt. 

While reading The Hotel Neversink, I found myself thinking about how well it pairs with Marisa Scheinfeld’s The Borscht Belt: Revisiting the Remains of America’s Jewish Vacationland (Cornell University Press, 2016). Scheinfeld grew up in the Borscht Belt and returned years later to photograph the crumbling ruins of the once glamorous resorts. Essays provide context about the significance of the Borscht Belt, but the photographs are the stars. Furniture sits abandoned and askew. Plants poke through the remains of floorboards. Former pools are empty and graffiti-ridden. The images look like they could be a setting for a gothic story and I can see the Hotel Neversink in the photographs of decay. 

Both books deal with the decline of the Borscht Belt, but I would be remiss if I failed to mention that both works are also love letters to the region and its history. Price and Scheinfeld refuse to romanticize the Borscht Belt, and in presenting these complex narratives, actually tell much richer stories. 

With the holidays just around the corner, consider picking up one or both of these books for the people on your list. Support the Catskills’ great indie bookstores by buying local (I bought my copy of The Hotel Neversink at Briars and Brambles Books in Windham). We also have copies of The Borscht Belt in stock at the Catskills Visitor Center and in our online store.

-KH