I really, really wanted to dig into this and love it but after many attempts I have to admit it just does not grab my attention. I love the little bits of world building and references to a setting that sounds vaguely dystopian, but they are too few and far between to keep me engaged. Wish it was faster paced and more overt.

Emotionally wrecked and filled with adoration for this odd gem of a novel. It grabbed me, took me by surprise and never let me go. Silvia is one of my favorite MC’s in a long while. Her search for meaning and understanding in her history was so beautifully woven with Balkan folklore. I have Inland on my shelf, guess it’s time to pick it up.

I believe that this book should be reclassified as Young Adult and then my review would be much more favorable. As it is now I was disappointed and uninterested in the story and plot. I've reached a saturation level on the post-apocalyptic settings that so many novels seem to embrace now. Been there, done that. Worse though is that I don't see that it was necessary for the story, it added nothing to the plot that any contemporary setting couldn't achieve.
Tea Obreht's writing and prose is beautiful as always. If you enjoy just reading a writer who is a master of her craft then give The Morningside a try, but the story left me bored and cold. I felt no attachment to the characters, they were flat and unremarkable except for one character, May, who had a little depth but could have been developed much further.

I received an ARC of this novel from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

A refuge mother and daughter find themselves caretakers of a once ornate apartment building. There are hidden secrets behind the doors of the residents.

⭐️: 3.5/5

In the not so distant future, Silvia and her mother are expelled from their home and eventually settle at the Morningside, a crumbling, luxury residence where Silvia’s aunt Eva works as the superintendent. Silvia knows almost nothing about her previous life, as her mother will not speak of it, so she drinks in Ena’s magical stories and becomes obsessed with a mysterious older woman and her three dogs. As she tries to find out the woman’s secrets, she unknowingly puts everything else she knows in jeopardy.

I was honestly pretty confused about this book throughout the majority of it. I was definitely…interested? But I couldn’t figure out if it was going to have a plot, or was more of a vibe. It did end up having a plot, but still was not exactly what I expected, based on the blurb I read about this one. I couldn’t figure out for the longest time what genre this book was either, which kept me from being able to classify it in my head and form an opinion on it. The most interesting part of this one was the speculative nature of the near-future elements. The reality of the decline of our planet is brought into stark relief in this one, and the repercussions of the necessary migration that would occur from coastal areas felt really real. I found the characters a little unbearable in this one, since none were particularly likable or even unlikable in an interesting way. The choice to have most of this book from a very young Silvia’s POV was interesting, since she is so naive and just…young. This was a pretty short book, and thus a pretty quick read, and the themes were interesting enough that I’d still recommend this one, even if it was a little…odd.

Thank you to @netgalley and @randomhouse for this free eARC!!

3.5 to 4 stars

"The Morningside" is a captivating coming-of-age tale amidst the backdrop of a not-so-distant, dystopian future. At its core, is the universal quest to find belonging.

Sil and her mother, displaced by the ravages of war and climate change, find refuge in Island City through the Repopulation efforts. Their residence in the enigmatic Morningside, overseen by Sil's Aunt Ena, becomes a catalyst for discovery. Through Ena's revelations about their past and the rich tapestry of folklore from their homeland, Sil begins to unearth her identity and forge connections long yearned for.

Inventive and imaginative, Sil drives the narrative finding herself on an adventure as she straddles the world she sees and the one that lies just beneath looking for connection and understanding that could jeopardize her everything she holds dear.

"The Morningside" is a testament to the power of storytelling, offering readers an inventive and compelling exploration of identity, community, and the sacrifices demanded by the pursuit of truth.

Thank you NetGalley Tea Obreht and Random House Publishing Group for an advanced e-copy of this book. Grab your copy March 19th, 2024!

3.5/5 stars

The Morningside is woven full of so many interesting themes. Magic, folklore, dystopia, cli-fi and speculative future.. At some points I feel there was too much going on, but at the end of the day the author did a nice job tying it all together.

Sil is a bright young girl, who alongside her mom are displaced from their far-away home. They are selected to be part of the resettlement program and placed to live in a very old past-its-prime luxury tower called the Morningside. The area is flood prone and from its description and its resident characters feels very much like Manhattan. My favorite description of many of the Morningside’s residents as “janglers,” those who wear too much of their jewelry at once, per Sil’s aunt. I’m sure we can all picture this type!

Sil can’t get into school immediately, so she ends up helping her Mom with her duties as the building’s Superintendent and finding what’s probably best described as mischief along the way. She beats herself up over much of it, too. I found her constant guilt/self-punishment to be a bit much and mildly annoying.. But naturally, this was part of her core character.

In addition to being the building’s superintendent, Sil’s mom also takes work as a salvage diver, as this occupation is in demand as sea levels have claimed so much real estate. It’s a risky decision and it leads to a whole other set of challenges for the family.

All of this carries on when Sil is turning into a young woman, befriends a girl of a sketchy-feeling family upstairs and grows utterly obsessed with a mysterious woman who lives in the penthouse who keeps a meticulous schedule of walking her very large dogs every night.

The book had some notable highlights of humor, suspense and sadness. These factors helped develop the characters and helped me feel some kind of connection with the characters.

Pros:
Good world building and decent character development. The author does a nice job of taking a mashup of genres/themes and folding them into a reasonably interesting story. My favorite character is a man in the book named May. He becomes friends with Sil and calls her “Snoopy.” Snoopy of course because he’s calling her out on her mischief. The way Obreht describes him calling her that made me snicker. I found this supporting character’s story to be one of the most interesting in the novel. If he got his own book, I’d definitely read it.

Cons:
I feel like the story really didn’t get semi-interesting until about 30% through. The last half - third of the book is the best part. If there had been more to hold my interest in the first part of the book, I would have rated it higher.

I wouldn’t put this one at the top of your TBR stack, but if you’re into cli-fi, speculative future and slightly supernatural characters, it might be a good fit for you.

Thank you Netgalley, Téa Obreht and Random House for the opportunity to read this book.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for an opportunity to listen to read this book in exchange for a review. All opinions are my own.
Sweet dreamy story told from the POV of a Silvia, a 10 year old girl. Her world like our own ( only the cities names have changed) has been mostly flooded for a generation. The parts that didn’t flood burn with uncontrollable wildfires. Refugees move from place to place to escape a huge genocidal war that took place decades ago. The world waits for the water to recede and things to go back the way they were. The suffering of the refugees is glossed over in the mind of Silvia, her mother having shielded her from much of it.
The story begins with Silvia and her mother arriving at the “ Morningside” a once luxurious apartment building as part of a government resettlement project. Silvia meets her aunt Ena who is acting as the building’s maintenance person. Soon Ena is spinning tales of the old country and magic, something her pragmatic mother refused to discuss. Silvia is completely enchanted. Much of the story takes place over a few months and is centered on Silvia spying on the mysterious wealthy recluse in the penthouse apartment who her aunt claims is a ‘ Vila’ aka a witch. The Vila- Betzi Duras has three massive dogs that Silvia and her aunt think are actually enchanted men. Silvia is determined to get proof. The story becomes more complex when a new resident Silvia’s age “ Mila” moves into the apartment building. They become “ Frenemys”. Mila having been raised in privilege, being much bolder than the cautious Silvia.

I enjoyed the story, and the POV, but found the pace remained languid, even when there should have been more of a sense of urgency among the characters. Satisfying conclusion .

Thank you to @Random and #NetGalley for the digital ARC of #TheMorningside. The opinions expressed here are entirely my own.

In the near future, climate change has caused massive flooding and people are being displaced from their homes and countries. Forced to continually migrate, Silvia and her mother end up in Island City at The Morningside, a crumbling "luxury" apartment where Silvia's aunt is the super. Silvia spends her days helping her aunt take care of the building and learning about her homeland - which she doesn't remember and her mother won't talk about. The stories feed Silvia's imagination and she's determined to uncover the secrets of The Morningside.

At its heart, this is a mother/daughter story and what you do to protect the ones you love. It's also climate change fiction with a little magical realism. Overall, an interesting story with some poignant moments.

This book has a ton of hype, but it just wasn’t for me. Set in a post-apocalyptic world, it follows a young girl and her mother as they move into a fancy apartment building as its caretakers.

The world-building was great, but I never connected to the characters. Most of the story is told through the eyes of an 11-year-old which is just too young for me to really get a handle on and I wasn’t sure what to make of the allusions to magic - is it supposed to be real or a child’s explanation for what happens?

The pacing also hurt it - the last 30 pages or so were interesting and I wish that had been the halfway point, rather than the end.

I liked the world and the writing and the characters. Other than some pacing issues, this book was really good.

Thank you to NetGalley and Random House Publishers for the digital advanced reader copy of this book.

There was so much I really liked about this world and story. Imagine a city covered in water, subject to the tides, people living in high rise apartment buildings turning in ration cards for disconnected and random ingredients and household items. Imagine the people who have lived in this city since before the flooding and imagine those who are immigrating in with the promise of permanent housing in the future. Everyone thinks things will get better, but there’s no true evidence to back them. This is the world that Silvia and her mother move to as part of the Repopulation program. Moving into The Morningside with Silvia’s aunt, Ena, pre-teen Sil is immersed into a new world that is nearly as unstable as her life before now. Ena tells Silvia stories of their homeland, stories her mother had withheld.

I appreciated the beautiful writing, as I did with the author’s prior work, The Tiger’s Wife. I thought the mixture of a near-future world mixed with Balkan folklore, magical realism, and science fiction was very interesting. The story was slow and mysterious and the worldbuilding was thorough while staying accessible. My struggle was that some of the storylines seemed disconnected. I’m lately recognizing in myself a slight prejudice against non-linear storytelling, so perhaps my sense of disjointedness is my own bias.

I also walked away wondering what the book was really about. Is it about the legacies we leave? Mothers and daughters? The stories we tell ourselves and the ways we survive in changing tides? The questions, who am I, where do I come from, and who will I be? Perhaps it was about a little of all of these.

The bottom line: I liked this one, but struggled a little with knowing what it was really “about.”

— NOTES —
Genres: speculative, dystopian
POV: first-person, singular
Content: past war, refugee experience, genocide

— MY RATING CONSIDERATIONS —
(all out of 5)
Pace: 4
Enjoyment: 4.5
Craft: 4
My Gut Feeling: 4
Total Stars: 4.125

I'm not quite sure how I feel about this book. I suppose I liked it, as I never really wanted to put it down, but I feel like my interest was more "where is Téa Obreht going here?" rather than "what is going to happen to these characters next?"

The story is very hazy. It's set in a fictional setting (or, a setting with a fictional gloss on it; the central city is plausibly New York, and several other locations named are clearly patterned on Italy and a number of Balkan countries), with some sort of near-future ecological crisis element going on -- much talk is given to salvage diving in flooded areas, which also provides one of the few real dramatic engines of the plot <spoiler>when the main character's mother is trapped in a building while salvage diving</spoiler>. It's not totally clear why Obreht chooses to do this, although it does lead to some interesting touches, such as the naming of the main character's native tongue as "Ours" rather than a national name, and the possibility of inventing unexpected encounters with other immigrants from Back Home who may have been on the opposite side of ethnic conflict without having to hold yourself to real-world details of that conflict.

It certainly helps with the fairy-tale quality of the story. Using a fictionalized setting means that it's not so jarring to have a supposedly-future timeline in which the day-to-day details of people's lives seem awfully similar, technologically speaking, to the late 90s or so -- not-so-coincidentally when Obreht herself immigrated to the U.S., though I have no information about how else her childhood does or does not map to the experience here. One might even consider this book as a sort of children's story, akin to Harriet the Spy with a fairy-tale spin, as most of the plot centers around the main character trying to figure out if her upstairs neighbor is some kind of folkloric witch-type figure.

All in all, I never really found that much to grab on to. It's interesting, but not engrossing.

The thing that really struck me the most about this book was that the narrator was Sylvia who is an 11-year-old, who is trying to get the answers to where she is from and ultimately who she is. Like so many family Sylvia‘s family has hidden difficult truths from her and it’s only as she develops new friendships and connections in this strange dystopian world filled with magic she had never seen before. Only as she begins to open her eyes and see what she didn’t see before can she really start to understand who she is and who she has come from.

Gentle, slow-burn, and genre-blending, The Morningside is a coming-of-age story that examines heritage and refuge.

This is a book about a child, or a child on the brink of teenage-hood, but it is no less compelling. In truth, I don’t gravitate towards books about children, but this book is one of those that reminds you of both the good and bad about what it was like when you were a kid and you still clung to beliefs in things like magic. This story, as an overarching concept, is about a young girl in a tenuous and volatile situation using the only tool she has - her family’s folklore - to make connections and understand the world around her. She relies on superstitions and rituals as a way to keep her mother safe when she (deep down) knows she has no ability to, and it’s heartbreaking and understandable.

The genre is very interesting. I would call this, above all else, a literary fiction. It’s set in a different world than ours, but one that is so similar it sometimes makes you wonder if she is talking about a real place. In my view, it’s clearly an allegory, not a fantasy or based in the real world. Then again, this book is vague enough that you could read it as being a real place, which is part of its charm.

The language of the book is quite lit fic at times, but I found it compelling. I loved the lyrical cast to the language, and while it might be flighty for some, I thought it was beautiful.

The story is interesting because it’s one of those that carries a lingering dread of something bad happening, but you also get the feeling the book isn’t going to traumatize you, that it’s instead transporting you to somewhere else. The book even confirms for us near the start that this is not a story of a girl being abused or a predator lying in wait for a neglected child but a story of loners coming together to help one another. I thought the way the child’s goal of spying on the seemingly magical older lady in her apartment fueled the plot (but not the events that transpired around this and in her life) was expertly done. Because Silvia is really just a girl, the spying on the older lady is her way of taking agency over her life, her way of figuring out something. It’s also her distraction.

The book also has a quirky cast of characters, such as the aunt. The relationship between mother and daughter was also one we’ve kind of seen before, but it’s also one that I think is relatable to many readers. I used to avoid these until I had my own daughters, in truth, but now I find them emotionally rewarding.

The novel also brings up themes relevant to today, such as climate, war, refugees, the power and wildfire-like spread of social shaming, and poverty. I honestly wasn’t sure what to expect when I requested it but I’m really glad I did. I honestly can’t say anything bad about it. I thought it was a lovely, poignant, beautifully told story.

Silvia and her Mom go to live with her Aunt at Morningside, a high rise community in Island City where part of the city is now underwater and where her Aunt is the superintendent. Her Mom has been so secretive about their past, their family and keeps her from telling people where they really lived before. She is put on a waiting list to attend school so she helps her Aunt with the daily upkeep and maintenance and her aunt gives her glimpses into her Mother's life as a kid but also of the residents. Silvia becomes obsessed with a mysterious lady who lives in the penthouse and her Aunt hints around at strange and magical possibilities of the lady and the high rise. This leads her on a journey to find out the truth not only of the lady and the building but also about life and her family. The world in a new age was a little hard to understand but I really enjoyed Silvia and her bravery and quest for answers as a teen in a new place that has lots of surprises for her!

Set in a post-apocalyptic world following war and flooding Silvia and her mother were exiled from their homeland. Through the repopulation program, they settled in Island City at the Morningside, a mystical building that causes havoc whenever it wants. The story follows Silvia as she tries to understand why her mother is so secretive about where she was born, the family she never knew, and even the mysterious older woman in the penthouse. The book has a mystical vibe and some sections were hazy, but that left room for my imagination. Although The Morningside was an odd read, I found it hard to put down. Thanks to author Téa Obreht, Random House, and NetGalley. I received a complimentary copy of this ebook. The opinions expressed in this review are entirely my own.

I picked this book up because I recognized the author from [book:The Tiger's Wife|8366402] (which I have yet to read) and wanted the chance to read some of her work.

Description:
There’s the world you can see. And then there’s the one you can’t. Welcome to the Morningside.

After being expelled from their ancestral home, Silvia and her mother finally settle at the Morningside, a crumbling luxury tower in Island City where Silvia’s aunt Ena serves as the superintendent. Silvia feels unmoored in her new life because her mother has been so diligently secretive about their family's past. Silvia knows almost nothing about the place where she was born and spent her early years, nor does she know why she and her mother had to leave. But in Ena there is an a person willing to give the young girl glimpses into the folktales of her demolished homeland, a place of natural beauty and communal spirit that is lacking in Silvia's lonely and impoverished reality.

Enchanted by Ena’s stories, Silvia begins seeing the world with magical possibilities and becomes obsessed with the mysterious older woman who lives in the penthouse of the Morningside. Bezi Duras is an enigma to everyone in the building. She has her own elevator entrance and leaves only to go out at night and walk her three massive hounds, often not returning until the early morning. Silvia’s mission to unravel the truth about this woman’s life, and her own haunted past, may end up costing her everything.

Startling, inventive, and profoundly moving, The Morningside is a novel about the stories we tell—and the stories we refuse to tell—to make sense of where we came from and who we hope we might become.

My Thoughts:
This dystopian world was set somewhere in the United States after some type of climate disaster that included drought and flooding which the people haven't really been able to recover from. The story is told from the point of view of Silvia who lives with her mother. They have been part of a Relocation Project and are living with her Aunt Ena. Silvia's mother won't talk about the past, so Silvia doesn't really know where she came from and what happened in the past. Aunt Ena provides information to Silvia and shows pictures, but Silvia doesn't know what is true and what her mother is hiding. This is the story of a mother and daughter relationship and of hidden secrets. It was interesting to see the two worlds competing in Silvia's mind - the one on the surface and the one Aunt Ena described with her stories of a Vila and scary negotiations the Vila made. This is an interesting book with magical realism and a coming of age story. It is character driven and the characters are well drawn and have depth.

Thanks to Random House through Netgalley for an advance copy. Expected publication on March 19, 2024.

This book was wonderful in every way. Tea Obreht evokes childhood so forcefully and so palpably that it brought me back to my own young self as an immigrant feeling like a stranger in a strange land yet having to be the adult, the interpreter, the parent to the parent who relies on you. The story itself is poignant yet whimsical, beautifully written, riding on the edge of post apocalyptic reality (possibly our near future) and magical realism. The thing I loved most about this book is that it’s full of hope. Even in a world gone to shit there are people who become your family that make it all worthwhile.

4.5 stars

An odd, slow moving, compelling dystopian magical realism story. There were so many interesting characters and I never new if an element was a childish whimsy, a part of their culture, or if supernatural forces were at play. It kept me wanting to read on to hear more about the world they were living in and what had happened in the past. There were so many different female relationships explored in unique ways that I know I will be thinking about for a long time. I also liked the use of Our language, and how the past affects actions, and what happens when you try to silence those stories. The only drawback was the ending for me, it seemed pretty sudden and jolting, but that could just be me wanting more from this world. I would have liked to see more of grown Sil's life.

Thank you to the author, publisher, and NetGalley for an advanced copy in exchange for an honest review.