Reads like an travel narrative, friendship story, critical essay, and journal all at once. Feels like bearing witness, like processing along side a dear friend. Those conversations you can only have because they are underpinned by a shared, understood world view.

This book will not be for everyone (sometimes heavy and repetitive) but it found me at the perfect time.

Thanks for the look. Not for me. My typical approach on Netgalley when I make my mind up before reading to the end of a book is to leave four stars and to not forward the review.

I started my read of this book with a clipping of the first sentence and the note 'I love it when the first sentence of a book grabs me like this...'
'Some moments in a life, and they needn’t be very long or seem very important, can make up for so much in that life; can redeem, justify, that pain, that bewilderment, with which one lives, and invest one with the courage not only to endure it, but to profit from it; some moments teach one the price of the human connection.'

Reading the first chapters I really thought I was going to like this a lot. The themes that the main character Arezu contemplates are interesting food for thought, and the writing is eloquent.
That first sentence is a good sample of what the book offers: 90% of the book is the main characters thoughts about the main themes: an abusive relationship between a young girl and an older man, the conflicts between Western culture, Middle Eastern Muslim culture and Israeli Jewish culture (and how they make both Arezu and her friend Ellie struggle with their heritage and identity), and the position of women in all these cultures. Add some sympathy for the struggles of the LGBTQ+ community as a cherry on top, and you've got a bunch of current hot topics crammed into one book.
And although each of these topics deserve the attention and Azareen had some interesting insights about each of them, it all became a bit much for me, especially because the main characters thoughts kept jumping from one theme to another, often without an obvious transition.
Making it worse, all this contemplating was set against a background story that went nowhere. Arezu brings her friend Ellie to the location of the abusive relationship hoping to come to grips with that period in her past. Only, I did not notice much growth in how she felt and thought, I actually thought she was coping with it reasonable well to start with. The presence of Ellie was also not of any influence on this process. She seemed to be there only to smile reassuringly, hold Arezus hand, and be a distraction whenever Arezu needed to stop (over)thinking things for a while.
The lack of progress made me lose interest about halfway. I kept reading hoping for that defining moment, that event or thought that would turn out to be a turning point for Arezu. I didn't get it. Instead I got an ending where the memories triggered by the surroundings and specific objects in it, morphed into actual 'ghosts', with some hints to the supernatural. (Inexplicable drafty chills felt by both women, flowers suddenly wilting and later reviving, ...) . This is what turned this from a 3-star into a 2-star for me.

I was really looking forward to diving into this novel based on the publisher's description, but boy did it disappoint. I attempted - and failed - to read this novel on three different occasions over the last few months and could not get past 60 pages. Arezu, an Iranian American, travels to with her best friend to visit the apartment she just inherited, the same apartment she experienced trauma in as a teenager. Arezu's unrelenting replaying of her trauma leaves no room for any other experiences on the page. It was exhausting to read and I could not be bothered to press through.

I received a free digital review copy from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review

I had really high hopes for Savage tongues but was a little let down. I am typically more drawn to plot heavy stories rather than character driven or self reflection stories. I think that's why this one fell a little flat for me.

Savage Tongues definitely gave me some Shirley Jackson vibes, which I liked. But that was about it. On the whole, this book's plot was very loosely formed which I didn't enjoy. Don't get me wrong, I do like some meandering plots, character self-reflection, and detailed writing, but this just made me want to stop reading and forced me to push my way through. Over time, the processing of the trauma our primary character has just gets super old. The writing style also didn't jive with me, but I won't hold that against it.

A unique accomplishment. The best book I have read this year and completely a tour de force, ranging from the psychologically acute and unsparing, to the lovely/ vivid descriptive and historic details that marked her first book. I am confident this book will win a bunch of awards for 2021. It will deserve them.

I was hopeful about this book, expecting something new from the exotic setting, etc. Unfortunately, Savage Tongues offered nothing fresh nor characters I could relate to. The seduction scene is too long and nothing prevents this abusive relationship from being just cliche. I can’t recommend this book.

My expectations were definitely not met, albeit really wanting to love this novel; some aspects of "Savage Tongues", namely the prose and the nod to Lorca, however most of it fell absolutely flat, especially the wooden dialogue and the lack of actual progress.

Thanks to netGalley for providing an eARC of this book in exchange for an honest review. I was quite hopeful when diving into the book, but it stalled out quickly and took me nearly a month to work through. Honestly, if i hadn't been focused on finishing to provide a review as as courtesy (and I'm not sure a 1* review really *is* a courtesy, but it's the principle of the thing), I would have abandoned this book.

I had several issues: first, there's almost no plot. I won't spoil anything by describing the whole plot, because it's effectively 'Two friends visit an apartment that one has inherited, where they stay for two days while nearly nothing happens, then they leave.' The entire book is a running meditation or reflection on one of those friends processing and understanding past trauma, which was interesting for about the first tenth of the book but quickly became repetitive and challenging.

Secondly, I felt like this was simply poorly written. The author writes like they've just found out what adjectives and adjective clauses are in middle school English class, and has cracked a thesaurus for the first time. Nearly every noun is accompanied by overwrought descriptions (A few examples: light described as 'brilliant, luminous, incandescent'. They're the same thing! Bougainvillea flowers described on the same page as 'like mouths painted rouge, like kisses turned toward the vivid blue of the sky'). Any one of these instances would be fine, but repeated over and over its actually exhausting to read. At a bare minimum, can we stick with one adjective per noun? One adjective clause per paragraph?

Finally, the dialogue is atrocious. The writer flips back and forth between actual dialogue between quotation marks and long paragraphs where she relates dialogue without quotations, meaning you have absolutely no idea when you're reading dialogue, internal narrative, or plot exposition. An example:

<blockquote>"In order to resolve this conflict [...] you'll have to draw on all of your psychic and emotional resources. The resolution may be subtle, the path towards its achievement equally so, composed of nearly imperceptible shifts in consciousness that ultimately will integrate all of the many differing opinions that you carry within you." She added that true integration didn't mean eliminating contradiction but rather aligning the inconsistencies inherent in my intellectual and physical life with the high ideals of the heavens, not the heaven we've constructed from our limited position on earth, from our religious perspectives, but a heaven beyond the paradise we've been taught to imagine, a space that is abundant, wide open, that allows opposing realities to exist side by side without judgement - a complex space where we are invited to let go of our constant need to know of understand everything, where we are no longer measured by our supposed purity.</blockquote>

That whole mess is a) only TWO sentences long and b) not written in a way that I've ever heard a real living, breathing, speaking human talk. The last sentence alone could occupy a college-level linguistics class for an entire lecture trying to decompose, and it's supposedly dialogue?

Ultimately, this is an interesting concept that is executed in such a disastrous manner as to render its point (meditation and rumination on the complexities and consequences of trauma) nearly inaccessible. I'm surprised this got published, and would not recommend this to anyone.

Although this book started strong, its repetitiveness and unrelenting deep dive into the 20 year old trauma of a speculative sexual awakening began to take its toll. What I did find more intriguing was the relationship between Arezu an American of Iranian heritage and Ellie, her best friend, who had been raised an Orthodox Jew but was an activist for displaced Palestinians in her native Israel. So much of this read like autofiction, but my biggest takeaway was to be sure to get tickets in advance if I should ever find myself in Grenada and wanted to visit the Alhambra.

At one point, I convinced myself that I was reading a parody. This book had to be a parody of a over-educated young woman who could only process her emotions by filtering them through the sterilized, feminist lens of a neurotic PhD student.

Unfortunately, that was not the case. We have a classic trope of an older, charismatic man who seduces a young, precocious lady, the relationship inevitably turning abusive. Which is fine! Tropes are cool! We can play with them in new ways! However, she takes this standard trope and keeps it static, analyzing it over and over although the reader has no emotional connection or investment in the relationship. The actual seduction scene, which the first 1/3 of the book hinges on, is laughably bad.

What we are left with is an intellectual framing and the author hanging ornaments on the framing, glittery adjectives and phosphorescent sensory details. Not a story. Not characters. Not plot.

I really wanted to like this novel. Arezu, a British-Iranian writer, travels to Marbella to face the trauma she experienced there one summer as a teen. She brings her similarly traumatized Israeli friend along for emotional support as she questions, relives, and tries to better understand the rape and abuse she experienced at the hands of an older, distantly-related man. There are some memorable passages in the book, but overall it was far too... literary. It was ambitious in all it tried to include and evoke, and although it succeeded in some aspects, there were others that felt tedious.

This is really quite a terrible book - terribly self serving, self - indulgent ... crossing lines with authorship that she shouldnt ...

This was unfortunately a DNF partway through the first chapter, and I usually try and finish a solid 95% books I start. I found the first 25 odd pages just so choppy, constantly flitting between explaining her upbringing, this one summer, and flying in the present day. It gave away everything so fast in terms of her relationship with her step-cousin (?), instead of letting the "mystery" build and let that tension take hold of the reader. It also suffered from a case of tell, not show.

So much potential, but came off as a VERY rough draft rather than an ARC.

In this book, the main protagonist, which has Iranian heritage and has lived both in Spain and the U.S.A., goes back to Spain as an adult. There, she remembers one of her previous times there, as a teenager, when she had an abusive relationship with Omar, a much older man.

Although racism, xenophobia and national identity has a place in the book, it is not the focus of it. Most characters do have mixed heritage, and are a bit from everywhere. Although that is commented on, the main plot point is the relationship with Omar. In a non-linear story, this book does a great job at portraying the complexities of it. It is not presented as a young woman who was a victim and was tricked, or as a young folly. The main character did want Omar, and despite being happily married, she still longs for him, she still has feelings for him despite knowing full well the damaged that he caused.

On top of the complex and nuisance conversations about identity and relationships with an imbalance of power, the language is beautifully poetic and reflective, adding one more layer op depth to the story. The only time that I felt this book lacked a bit was in the explicit sex scenes, where the writing felt somewhat awkward, but those were few.

Overall, it is a great and beautifully painful portray of an abusive relationship, in the background of the current multicultural world we live in.

The sense that this novel took itself terribly seriously outweighed any of its good points (of which there were many, especially at the start.) I'm beginning to wonder if I put all the novels together that started well, would they make an altogether better book?
This is the story of a girl who is gifted an apartment in Spain, the scene of the crime so to speak, and rather than just not act on it, she goes there with a pal on a "recovery journey - to physically return to the sites of their trauma to map their stories in words and reverse the unbearable pain"
So far so good, except this isn't the site of Ellie's pain. Ellie is Israeli with empathy for Palestine and is torn. Marbella is never the site of her pain. So this was a selfish journey, purely so Arezu could retrace the steps of her Omar obsession.

You know that friend that has an ex, that wasn't even an ex, like it was more of an infatuation, and they never stop going on about them? This is what reading this novel felt like. Sure, she shook it up by wrapping lots and lots of words around every single detail but where this differs from true literary fiction is that true literary fiction writers know when to pontificate and when to push on the action and it's not over every single thing. Not everything deserves a thorough, analytical audit, especially, just for example. noticing you have sunburn. Some times could go unsaid or don't need three sentences to describe. Nationhood plays second fiddle to a toxic relationship even if this could have easily been played out between the supposedly great friendship between the two.

The good bits: I liked that she called out and owned people's struggles with her name. It is a mouthful: Azareen Van Der Vliet Oloomi but it's not impossible to say and it's downright outrageous that she would be called upon a radio talk show and made to apologise for having a hard to say name.
I enjoyed the nod to Lorca, a spanish poet, novelist, playwright who was mysteriously murdered and never found. I enjoyed the map tropes.
This book started well. The prose was well delivered, and evocative. Here were some sentences I enjoyed.
"Conscience can be slow to awaken. Especially when one is used to all manner of abuses."
"Omar robbed me of words: the most terrible parts may forever remain unspeakable"
"I wished I'd known the hidden geography of his grief."

The bad bits: I found the incessant harping on about Omar and the trauma that haunts her still a little repetitive and boring. Omar didn't speak like a real person and she recalls fragments of him at the drop of a hat. It became obvious halfway in that he would never materialise. For this reason, it was hard to believe in him or in their relationship, the damage that had been done, because the fragments of her memories of him were so...fragmented. Why would a robot who issued single tense simple sentences exert such control over another, particularly one so prone to histrionic overthinking?
"You", he said to me, "are my lover."

The problem was that without meeting Omar, and seeing him in whatever reduced capacity he now had, she had no growth, which isn't always important but the writing wasn't quite good enough to get away with none. She tried to flit back and forth between present day and twenty years prior, but the effect was that we did not want to hear another word about fecking Omar, please just shut up about him. Anything that moves at the pace of a glacier, from the point of view of a self obsessed and unself aware overwrought teen cannot lead anywhere else.

I found the friendship between her and Ellie implausible, mostly because of the dialogue which was wooden and strange. I found it oddly inconsiderate that she kept smoking in spite of the fact that her best friend had already expressed several times that she did not find it pleasant.

This author definitely has potential (and I know this isn't her first book. but she is still quite young) and I'm glad I'm become familiar with her work.

A huge thanks to NetGalley for the ARC.

Azareen Van der Vliet Oloomi’s novel “Savage Tongues” is the most intense fictional treatment of deep physical and emotional trauma that I can remember reading, It is a relentless account of enduring and re-experiencing teen-age assault and abuse. It is about women who have survived but who will never fully heal their inflicted wounds.

“Savage Tongues” celebrates women who experience deep pain and injury and fight back. There were many times during my reading that I felt like I shouldn’t be watching, that the experiences that Oloomi was describing were too personal and private. I felt like I was sitting in on therapy sessions that were not meant to be observed by a third-party. It was all immensely powerful.

The setting was another fascinating thread. The bulk of the action takes place in Andalusia. The two protagonists have roots – one Persian and the other Jewish - that share ancient and modern trauma from the region, adding historical depth to the pain both carry.

There is so much hurt, but it is immaculately rendered. Oloomi is a star to be followed.

Thank you to Houghton Mifflin Harcourt and NetGalley for the dARC.

Savage Tongues is a book that covers several themes, the principal of which are predatory romance and living in the West as someone from the Middle East. The story allowed some interesting and thoughtful commentary on those two points; however, it didn't have enough space to fully elaborate on the second, and the first felt a little overdone at times. I could relate to Azeru in some ways, and I wanted to feel compassion for her, but now and again her unrelenting self-pity made me want to tell her to pull herself together. Overall, though, this was an enjoyable read, with lyrical prose that really drew you into the moment with the characters. It was my first time reading this author, but I would definitely pick up another of her books in the future. Try Savage Tongues is you like thought-provoking and emotional fiction. For me it was a 3.5-star read that I would round up to four stars, rather than down to three.

Beautifully written book, superb language usage and descriptive makes this a worthwhile read. However, the views expressed aren't that of myself and so i found it difficult to read. This is in no way distracts from the literary content.