More like 3.5*
In a not-so-distant future, eleven-year-old Silvia arrives in Island City, accompanied by her mother, both candidates of a federal repopulation program to revive the city. Part of Island City is flooded, as is most of the world. Silvia and her mother have come from “Back Home”, via a circuitous route that took them through several city-states along Silvia’s short life. She has been instructed by her mother to never speak “Ours”, especially not in front of strangers, and never utter word of the places they have lived in. Since Sil’s mother is secretive, bordered on reticent, Silvia doesn’t fully grasp the reach of what has been asked of her, but she will soon find out.

Upon arrival in Island City, with the purpose of staying put, Silvia discovers that they have another living relative, her aunt Ena, who has worked for ten years as a superintendent at The Morningside—a thirty-three-story building with a century-old history of catering to rich residents of upper-island. Nowadays, the tower is in decay mode. Since the repopulation program does not guarantee immediate school enrollment, Silvia is left to explore the building and help her aunt, then her mother, with maintenance duties. It is during one of those times that she spies Bezi Duras, the resident of the tower’s penthouse, in a compromising manner that exposes one of Bezi’s closely guarded secrets. Henceforth, Silvia will obsess over Bezi to the point of endangering hers and her mother’s newfound way of life.

Having had The Tiger Wife, Tea Obreht’s debut novel, languishing on my TBR for years, and after having enjoyed her sophomore novel Inland a great deal, both of which have elements of European folklore seamlessly incorporated into the story, I was more than willing to give The Morningside my undivided attention. I found it a bit uneven, with traces of brilliance but much unrealized potential.

The Morningside is set in a dystopian future where most of the world has undergone famine and war due to rising seas and climate catastrophe. Island City, a place that resembles Manhattan closely, has dealt with all those issues, but the few original inhabitants of the city still harbor the ideal that the place can be reclaimed from the sea provided the right leader comes along to make things right. The repopulation program has been set up so people from afar can come to live where the old residents no longer want to. Life is hard for most people. There are austerity measures in place, including a Food Rationing card for every family. Eating meat is illegal, as are most luxury goods, though there exists an underground market (economy) that provides them to the right kind of people. Those austerity measures won’t be strange to those who lived behind the Iron Curtain and its satellites, communism being its own form of dystopia, and Tea Obreht borrows freely from it, and as liberally as she can having emerged on the other side of it. Other notable borrowed elements of her home country’s history are the folklore—a nice touch with the story being so dark most of the time—, and the bit about the war criminal who orchestrated disappearances “Back Home”, which happened in the late 1990s during the Balkan War.

The Morningside has a flowy, page-turning narrative. Tea Obreht sure can write. She can make the mundane interesting, though, unfortunately, there’s a lot of the mundane in this book about the end-of-the-world. Most of the characters aren’t interested enough, which is a flaw in a book that is, for the most part, character-driven. Silvia, Lewis May, and Bezi were the highest points of this novel. I liked their story arcs.

Aside from being easy to read, I found The Morningside an uneven novel. However, I’m more than willing to read whatever Tea Obreht comes up with next.

Thanks to the publisher for granting me access to a free digital copy via Netgalley.

Here’s a fun fact: When I lived in Toronto, Canada, as a toddler, the street I grew up on was named Morningside Avenue. So, I must admit that the reason I chose this book for review was because of that. Surely, I felt, I could revel in some kind of nostalgia for my innocent youth before I became something of a hellraiser as a pre-teen. Well, as it would turn out, The Morningside is a novel about nostalgia, but of the unremembered kind. The book is set in the world after a war and climate change has decimated it, and its characters have gone through unspeakable horrors as a result. What is remembered is the stuff of sentimentality, it turns out: boys rapping in the streets and getting free apricots from fruit vendors as a child. However, I’m perhaps getting ahead of myself. The Morningside, as written by author Téa Obreht, is a kind of magic realist fable of the life of an 11-year-old girl named Silvia. Told from her point-of-view, the novel is a meditation on death and resurrection, and of fantasies that take the place of harsh realities.

The book is set in the near future in a burg called Island City (that does, indeed, sit on an island). Silvia and her mother have settled in a run-down apartment building called the Morningside as part of a repopulation program for refugees needing homes in a decimated environment. Silvia’s mother (why does this remind me of a Dr. Hook song?) takes a job as the building’s superintendent while Sil herself awaits word on what school she will attend (if any). Any bits of information Sil has about her mother’s past life come from her aunt Ena, who regales Silvia with tales of her family and life in the city that are folksy. Ena tells Silvia, for instance, that the mysterious woman named Bezi Duras, who lives on the penthouse floor and how leaves with her dogs every night, is a witch who turns her dogs into men during the day. When Ena dies (early in the book), Silvia takes it upon herself to find out if the tales are true, with seemingly disastrous results. In the process, she befriends a Black gentleman and a girl about her age who moves into the Morningside and seems willing to unlock its secrets with Sil.

On the surface, The Morningside scans as one of those books meant just for me. I’m a big fan of magic realist fiction or anything that’s a little slipstream or weird — and to that end, this novel doesn’t disappoint. However, it might have been a tad too weird for my liking. The book doesn’t start to cohere until its final quarter, at which point the tone that takes over is a bit on the sentimental and sorrowful side. It’s the ending that makes The Morningside what it is (and, don’t worry, I’m going to try to not say too much about it to not spoil it). The other thing that niggles at me is that Silvia is presented as someone who is an old soul: she comes across as too scheming to be a true 11-year-old and her lies and her interior thoughts appear to be the mark of someone much older. (That said, the entire novel is told as a giant flashback, so there’s that.) Yet another niggling thing is that the novel is set in near future Manhattan, which I didn’t see at all — I imagined it taking place off the western coast of Florida for some reason, so this should have been brought up in the novel proper and not the publicity notes. Still, some will be enchanted by this tale, which is about unlikely friendships and the gruesome effects of a changing environment — and the effects that have on human behaviour. There’s a lot that could be unpacked about the book, but doing so risks spoiling it. And this is a book that works best knowing as little about it as possible before reading it. (So what are you doing reading me? Go out and peruse this title for yourself! Well, okay, I’m kidding there. Kind of. Sort of.)

All in all, The Morningside will make readers nostalgic for a world they weren’t even born into, even if that’s a world sometimes fraught with pain and hardship. This is a novel about navigating life in the face of human-made disaster, even if some of that human-made disaster is the stuff of totalitarian regimes. It turns out there’s a reason why certain stories aren’t told to Silvia and why fantasies may be all that will be bequeathed to her. However, again, I may be saying too much there. At the end of the day, there’s a lot of thought that went into the construction of the world of The Morningside, and you can see why its author won the 2011 Orange Prize for Fiction. It takes verve for someone to tell a story such as this and make it work, and while this does have its deficiencies (but doesn’t every novel?), there is some crackling good storytelling going on by the novel’s close. If you like speculative fiction that doesn’t fall too hard on the speculative side, you’ll probably enjoy this. At least, as much as I did. Now I suppose I’ll go back to thinking about my early childhood and living on a certain street!

I loved loved loved this heart-warming story from Tea Obreht. The beautiful prose and the enchanting imagery had me in thrall. Eleven-year-old Silvia stole my heart. The story is told in the voice of Sil who has recently moved with her mother to an exclusive tower called The Morningside in Island City. Uprooted from her home, craving for her family and friends, she busies herself exploring the tower and its residents. The novel is based in a dystopian world ravaged by climate change, but the references suggest that Morningside could well be based in future Manhattan. The water levels have risen, basements and low-lying areas are flooded and uninhabitable, much of the flora and fauna are extinct. The Government has introduced a Repopulation program to attract refugees from other countries into the Island city. Sil and her mother are beneficiaries of said program. I loved getting into Syl's head. Tea Obreht perfectly captures the feelings, the sense of adventure, the childlike curiosity, and the childish anxieties of an eleven-year-old without sounding over the top. I loved the magical realism and the folklore. I also loved the mystery surrounding the characters Bezi Duras and May. The ending was something else altogether. Can't stop gushing!!. All in all, an original, entertaining, easy read which has me craving for the author's other works.

Thank you Netgalley, Ramdom House Publishing and Tea Obreht for the ARC.

When Silvia and her mother arrive at the Morningside to move in with her aunt as part of the Repopulation Program the apartment tower is well past its glory days. Most of the city’s original residents have fled to avoid rising tides and eroding land. Against the dystopian backdrop of a city slowly falling into the sea and rationed food where meat is no longer consumed, eleven year old Sil meets a unique cast of characters including Aunt Ena who feeds her magical tales. The radio is always on and the Dispatcher is taking calls about the goings on in the community and creating connection among people who are otherwise fairly isolated. Shortly after arriving Sil catches a glimpse of her neighbor Bezi Duras that raises questions and starts her on a path of sleuthing that brings back the past and changes the course of her future.

What I appreciate most about this novel is how Obreht explores identity within the context of displacement using magical realism and dystopian elements coupled with a child as the central character. Silvia and those around her navigate a world where the past is always present; Silvia is seeking it and her mother is hiding it. There is an ever present fear and need to hide who they are. At the same time, there are glimmers of hope, joy, connection. Even when there are cracks in the facades the characters have so carefully created, their lives continue and they find ways to believe, just a little, in the impossible.

This is billed as magical realism which can be hit or miss for me, but the line Obreht draws between reality and magical elements that are fairytale or fable like worked for me because they are reasonable figments of an eleven year old’s imagination. This coupled with the dystopian setting was a perfect combination for my taste. Not too overbearing but an element that played well into what was happening for Silvia and the larger themes of the novel.

Ultimately I enjoyed this story and am interested to check out Obreht’s other work.

Thank you @atrandomhouse @netgalley for the #gifted ARCs

11 year old Silvia and her mother are climate refugees who have been bouncing from country to country until they arrive at the former great metropolis, Island City, which resembles Manhattan now ravaged by floods. They move to the Morningside, a decaying high rise complex that had once been the jewel of the upper-city neighborhood known as Battle Hill. Silvia and her mother are part of an immigration program that the administration of Obreht’s fictional unnamed society is promoting to prevent urban abandonment. Those who participate in the Repopulation Program receive rations and are promised a single-family home in the future.

Silvia’s mother is committed to obscuring their origins. There were no records, no pictures and she did not make plans “because plans required belief.” She is fearless of the physical risks of her job as a salvage diver, but is terrified of the past. In contrast, Silvia’s Aunt Ena, the superintendent of the Morningside, “kept the past in full, abundant view. Pictures, cards, pamphlets.” Before Aunt Ena could divulge all of her knowledge to Silvia, she died. “My mother couldn’t even wait until Ena was cold in the ground before she started slamming the doors to all the spaces of the past where I had only just gained admittance.”

Silvia is lonely and isolated waiting for an opening so that she can attend school. Curious, like a post-apocalyptic, pre-teen Nancy Drew, Silvia is particularly drawn to Bezi Duras, the mysterious woman who lives in the penthouse with her 3 enormous dogs (Ena said that they were not dogs but, rather, men during the day and dogs at night). Bezi, like Silvia, was from Back Home, but she had come to Island City years ago and so could scarcely say five words of “Ours, and then only in a disgraceful accent.” Silvia thinks she is the Vila, a spirit of the mountain with a proclivity for mischief and three sons who could shapeshift. Silvia elicits the assistance of others, including Lewis Allen May Osmond (“Lamb”), a disgraced writer, who calls Silvia “Snoopy,” but offers to exchange a key to Bezi’s private elevator for the personal correspondence that he left behind when he departed from the Morningside.

Obreht is a natural storyteller who has crafted an atmospheric and inventive novel that is set in a not-to-distant future where conflict and climate change have upended society. The novel is helmed by a spunky protagonist, is replete with fantastical elements, but remains grounded in a potential reality. Although the world Obreht envisions is one of sorrow, there remains hope.

There's so much going on in this book. The main character and her mother flee instability in their native land to an unnamed, flooded city. The city has attracted immigrants by promising resettlement and security, but the main characters find that those promises are mainly empty. They are stuck superintending the Morningside, a crumbling luxury building, as well as taking on other dangerous odd jobs. There's also some magical realism going on, including a possible "monster" residing in the building. Added to all this is a general milieu of climate anxiety, a decaying world, classicism, and traumatic pasts. Oh, and not to mention another plotline that doesn't really reveal itself until well into the book-- a serious crime that the main characters may or may not have been involved in! Really, there's a lot going on, and it all mainly works in one way or another, though I never had a strong sense of where the book was going at any particular point!

After escaping her home with her mother, Silvia comes to live with her aunt, the superintendent of the Morningside, an aging luxury high rise in Island City, a city that once was booming but now is slowly deteriorating and sinking into the water. Silvia’s mother refuses to speak about their past and Silvia does not know why they had to run nor is she allowed to speak to anyone about where they came from. Silvia becomes obsessed with the enigmatic resident of the penthouse and her possibly magical dogs and garden, and she and the only other girl in the building, Mila, attempt to discover her secrets. But Silvia and her mom’s own secrets are exposed when Mila’s mysterious father eventually shows up.

This one was a bit weird but very good. There is a lot going on, it’s a bit dystopian, there are family secrets and drama, and a touch of magic/mythology. Regardless, it was beautifully written and the story kept me engaged. I thought that even with an almost fairytale-like and surreal quality to the story, the characters and their interrelationship dynamics were still exceptionally realistic and vivid. It took me a day to process my thoughts, but when I came back to write my review I felt really good about this one and I think it will stick with me for a while.

4.25

Thank you to NetGalley and Random House for the ARC to review

It is always a good day when one has a Tea Obreht book to read. I know of no other author that has that magical story-telling ability that I only ever found in Gabriel Garcia Marquez. "Morningside" was an absolute treat, stories within stories, and a girl trying to learn who she is when her world has fallen apart. The mystery of the 'old lady in the tower,' and the lovely prose kept me turning the pages. Ultimately, Tea Obreht's books are magic, and one never leaves, or turns the last page, disappointed. Highly recommended and a worthy novel by a very talented author!

5 stars

What a smart, thoughtful, captivating book about the worlds and communities we build!

This is the story of an eleven-year-old girl, Silvia (Sil), who arrives with her mother in a partially flooded island city as a climate and war refugee. While living in a once-grand apartment building called The Morningside, Silvia struggles to connect with her closed-off mother, her native country’s history and folklore, her adoptive nation’s expectations of her, and the few friends she starts to make in her new home. Throughout the story she attempts to discover whether her neighbor, an elderly painter with three enormous dogs, is really all she seems, or if she is actually a powerful witch or spirit called a Vila.

This is a novel about the connections between people, the stories we tell about others and ourselves and how they contribute to our belonging in a place, a time, or a community. Sil feels isolated, spending months as the only child in her building, and desperately longs for some sense of connection to the people or places she has touched. Her aunt is full of stories she can hardly believe, and her mother hardly tells her anything; both women went through significant trauma in Silvia’s birth country and have very different relationships with its memory, each of which impacts Silvia’s own attempts to understand her connection to it.

The story is deceptively slow-paced, conversational and meandering, unraveling secrets and teasing what’s real and what’s not. However, I found myself quickly absorbed, and finished within two days.

The Morningside is a beautiful, fantastic (in the Todorovian sense), playful, serious, and deeply affecting work of near-future fiction, about choosing how to interact with the past and the world around us. I can’t promise you will like the book, but I can promise that you won’t finish it unchanged.

Tea Obreht's first novel The Tiger's Wife is one of my favorite books of all time. Her new novel lives in a different landscape--Island City, parched and flooded by climate change--but has the same texture, a swirl of Eastern-European mythology and practical survival. Like The Tiger's Wife, there are layers of storytelling here. Silvia, the novel's adolescent narrator, is navigating the new landscape of Island City, having recently arrived with her mother as part of the Repopulation Project after a series of displacements. They join her great aunt Ena at the Morningside, a nearly-empty decaying luxury high rise, where Ena acts as the caretaker and superintendent. Ena, who had, according to Silvia's mother, the luxury of leaving their homeland before she was forced to, wants to hold onto every scrap of the past and share her stories with Silvia; Silvia's mother is determined to erase the past and keeps nothing more than a year. It's a novel about mothers and daughters, storytelling, whether to hold onto the past or abandon it, how to move through its ghosts. I loved it.

Thanks to the author, the publisher, and Netgalley for my free earc. My opinions are all my own.

With The Morningside, Tea Obreht offically becomes a favorite author. While her work takes concentration and focus, it is oh so worth it. There is very little plot, and this is very weird, but most importantly, it MOVED me. And that is all that matters.

I was given an ARC by the publisher in exchange for an honest review

The Morningside by Téa Obreht is a literary novel focusing on migration and what we lose and gain when we leave home. Silvia and her mother settle in the Morningside, a luxury tower on an island, as part of the Repopulation Program after being forced to leave their home country. Silvia spends time with her aunt, Ena, who tells her fantastical stories and gets Silvia thinking about the world around her in more magical ways.

What I really liked was the use of ‘Ours’ for Silvia and her mother’s native language and ‘Back Home’ for their home country. It feels real and personal without picking a specific country or making one up. It allows the universal themes of leaving your home country because terrible things are happening to feel like they could happen anywhere and for many who are displaced or come from immigrant families to see their own experiences reflected as well. It was a smart choice and I loved every time I saw ‘Ours’ in relation to the language.

The other thing I really liked was how Silvia interacted with the other citizens of the island. The dynamics felt fleshed out and their backstories were often commentary on things happening in our world now, such as May and his plagiarism scandal and his anxiety over trying to move past it. The city being half-underwater lends a clif-fi element that feels very right now and near-future at the same time.

I would recommend this to fans of adult fiction with child protagonists, readers looking for explorations on being displaced, and fans of literary fiction with climate fiction elements.

Tea Obreht offers a unique narrative experience through the eyes of Silvia (Sil), whose life unfolds within the confines of the Morningside, a high-rise in Island City. With dystopian elements, 11-year old Sil shares her journey as part of a repopulation program sometime in the near future, alongside her secretive mother, who doesn’t talk about the past. Sil finds solace in the folktales shared by her Aunt Ena, the superintendent, while navigating the intricacies of her daily routine and forming an obsession with Bezi, a penthouse recluse who lives with 3 wolfhounds. Sil forms an unlikely connection with a middle-aged black character named May who occasionally “creeps” into her life from time to time. I was fascinated by his backstory.

Despite initial struggles with the pacing and disorientation in space and time, the story gradually unravels into a captivating exploration of relationships, mysteries, and the power of storytelling. At its core, "The Morningside" delves into Sil's evolving bond with her mother and the unraveling of a compelling mystery that kept me engaged until the very end. Overall, I found the book to be a captivating and immersive read once the story gained momentum. Through Sil’s journey, this novel is a poignant coming- of-age story highlighting her resilience and growth amidst a changing world.

I really did not enjoy this book very much. It is from the perspective of an 11 year old girl, which is why I had a hard time getting into it. The future dystopian representation of Manhattan was interesting, as well as the Morningside, which is the building where they lived. The references to the past kept me motivated to finish this book. However, it is really a young adult book. Thank you to NetGalley for the ARC. This was my first book by this author.

This book is so precious in its mysticism-- woven through and withheld in a spellbinding narrative. Well-crafted and timely, it harkens to the past and pulls from the future to sit perfectly in our present.

The Morningside by Tea Olbreht is a post-apocalyptic novel, not my favorite genre. It is the story of some residents of a high-rise apartment called The Morningside. It’s featured story-teller is a young teen called Sil, short for Sillvia. Sil and her mom have been relocated to the Island and to her mother’s aunt, Ena, who is the super for the building. As most children, Sil is able to build a mystery out of nothing and so she builds one out of the “strangeness” of the woman who lives in the penthouse. She is an artist and has three dogs and so is interesting right off the bat.

Sil is a typical kid who doesn’t have enough to do. She is on the waiting list for school so she hasn’t that to keep her busy and her chores are not enough. She has an active imagination which has been encouraged by Ena before she died and so goes looking for trouble. Luckily she believes that information will come to her, that she need not seek it. Usually she is right until another kid moves into the building. Mila believes in being more proactive and it gets both of them in trouble. There was a little magic, mostly imagined, as well as fantasy, mostly imagined. It had moments of brilliance but mostly seems like a waste of my time.

I was invited to read The Morningside by RandomHouse Publishing Group-Random House. All thoughts and opinions are mine. #Netgalley #RandomHouse #TeaOlbreht #TheMorningside

This is such a weird book. To be honest there were a few times when I almost gave up on it but I’m glad I didn’t.

The pacing was a little off to me at first but then as the story unfolded it made more sense and I was hooked.

The Morningside is a post-apocalyptic story told from the point of view of Sylvia, an eleven year old girl. She has quite the imagination and is thoughtful, creative, and searching for connection. Although it is never confirmed the setting of the majority of the story felt very much like New York City to me. Obreht’s writing paints the picture very well and I found myself enjoying visualizing New York in a different way.
I also really loved all the different and unique characters I got to know. There’s a lot of backstory, mystery, intrigue and so much hope.

Definitely one of the more unique stories I have read!

4 ⭐

Unfortunately this was a novel I did not resonate with and could not get through. While I loved the author’s debut novel, The Tiger’s Wife, The Morningside did not work for me. The premise is interesting- refugees in a dystopian world and a young girl learning about her hidden past, their family and folktales. The delivery for me fell flat. It was disconnected and confusing. It may have been too dystopian and abstract for my taste and could very well appeal to readers who enjoy highly speculative fiction.

I tried to connect with the characters but continually felt distant from them. The story was bleak with bursts of magical realism that, for me, didn’t make sense.

The world building was very good, and Obreht’s writing was lyrical and well crafted as usual. I wanted to like this, but kept finding it a chore to read. Ultimately I was too disinterested and confused to push through to the end.

Thank you to NetGalley and Random House for my advanced digital copy. Publication day is set for March 19th.

A mother and her daughter Silvia (11) arrive at the Morningside, a fine old luxury residence tower, to live with their aunt Ena who is the superintendent for the building. They are displaced people in a war-torn world that is also being destroyed by the floods and fires of climate change. Silvia is fascinated by her aunt's stories of her childhood and the folk tales that enriched it. When Ena claims the three giant dogs owned by the old woman living in the penthouse are really three men turned into dogs by an enchantment, Sil sets out to prove it.

And so we have a different sort of coming-of-age story--a young girl living under mother's thumb but squirming to break free, being led astray by the stronger personality of a new friend and not really understanding the dangers that could be lying in wait. Sil thinks her mother's insistence that they not speak their old language is just plain silly but this new country is not 'all forests and toadstools and magic violins' like in Ena's stories.

Many thanks to the author and publisher for granting me an arc of this new novel through NetGalley. My review is voluntary and the opinions expressed are my own.

With every book, Téa Obreht offers a unique, deep, compelling story that transports me to her beautifully complex and well-drawn world. With THE MORNINGSIDE, Obreht tells the story of little girl Silvia, displaced with her mother from their homeland and all she has ever known. At The Morningside, Silvia is enchanted by folktales told by her aunt and dives deep into the secrets of her country, her past, and the mysterious woman called Bezi Duras. I was transported into another world with vivid, powerful storytelling and the accomplished Obreht's magical story weaving. I received a copy of this book and these opinions are my own, unbiased thoughts.