This book is odd and unusual. I can't say it's for everyone, but those who connect with it will fall in love. Silvia is a compelling and curious character. The relationship she has with her mother is complicated and represented well. About displacement, family, origins, rituals, and magic.

I was unable to finish this book, I thought it had a strong start, but I never quite became engaged in the proceedings.

Ever since I read The Tiger's Wife, I pick up anything that Obreht writes. This was a great book, though a departure from her typical style and setting. It's cool to see writers branch out and try new things and this was excellently written.

This was a bizarre book. It has taken me a while to gather my thoughts because for the most part nothing happened. It is mainly a character study of an immigrant mother and daughter trying to make their way in a new place with very minimal help from the governmental programs that are supposed to assist them.

Told from a young girl’s POV, there are some fantastical elements that left me questioning whether this was supposed to be magical realism or just the imagination of a curious child.

I was compelled to keep reading the entire time but I was left with a feeling of disappointment because I assumed something would happen that never did. If you go in with the expectation of a very character driven novel, I don’t think you will be disappointed.

Rating:
⭐️⭐️⭐️.75

Read if you like:
Character driven stories
Coming of age stories
Immigrant stories

Thank you to Thoughts From a Page podcast and Penguin Random House For the traveling ARC.

A young girl and her mother have been moving from place to place for sometime. Running from their past lives and displaced due to weather related destruction. The story is interesting and nicely written. I just had trouble really connecting with the characters or what was going on around them. The various stories and what they are running from feel disconnected. I’m just not sure what to think about it all. In one sense it had the feeling the story is from the past until they mention looking things up on the internet. I was quite sure the point of the story. I truly wanted to like it. I give it three Stars because it’s written well it’s just not my cup of tea.

This is the second book I have read by Tea Obreht and will not be the last! As with her other books, I love the way Obreht includes magical realism in her stories in a way that feels believable. I was captivated right from the start of this one, both in the way Obreht builds the world and in her characters. Highly recommend!

Beautifully and lyrically written - the story in a futuristic setting was beyond my understanding of magical realism. This book will appeal to those who enjoy that genre.

Thanks to NetGalley and Random House Publishing Group - Random House for the opportunity to read this ARC.

The author has a beautiful writing style, and she does a good job of weaving together many elements: post-apocalypse, coming-of-age, mother-and-daughter relationships, friendships, the power of storytelling, what’s real and what isn’t, and so much more.

This was a very unique and beautiful book. It is one of the most unusual and strange books I have ever read. It is a novel of a future set in a city on the eastern coast somewhere, in the not too distant post apocalyptic future, the unnamed city has been inundated with flooding, and this is where a girl and her mother have come to live after leaving their former country. The Morningside is a complex mother-daughter relationship explored and told through the eyes of the daughter, a young girl named Silvia. It is about secrets, discovery, and keeping the people we love safe in a world that is suddenly unfamiliar and fraught with danger. I was fortunate to receive this novel from Netgalley as an Advance Reader Copy in exchange for an objective review.

The Morningside is a lyrically imaginative story with a plot that is striking yet a bit scattered. While I enjoyed getting immersed into a near-future world where climate change has reshaped the coasts of Island City, which is reminiscent of our New York City, I struggled at really connecting with the characters and the plot in the same way.

The story follows 11-year-old Silvia (Sil) and her mother as they are forced to relocate to a now-crumbling luxury building called The Morningside as part of a repopulation program for those that had to leave their ancestral homes. Sil’s aunt Ena was a superintendent in the building and they became close during the time they spent together, with Ena always telling stories of folklore and magic. Sil later befriends Mila, a new girl that moved into the building, and together they embark on adventures to investigate the truth of some of Ena’s tales, specifically revolving around a mysterious artist that lives in the penthouse, as well as the truth about their own pasts.

There was a lot about this book that worked for me, but there was also a lot that left me unsettled and unsure. While it may have just taken some time to settle into the narrative and style of the writing, the first quarter or so felt particularly unsettling, without anything I could really grab onto to keep me grounded in the story. As it continued, the plot felt a little firmer and I could follow much more easily, but I still ended up struggling to connect with it despite the lovely and surreal prose. I really appreciated the mother-daughter relationship depicted throughout the pages, and I enjoyed reflecting on the messages and themes of how things and people change over time, and how we adapt to move forward. Although there weren’t an overwhelming amount of characters to keep track of, there were still times that the side-characters and tangential storylines strayed me away too far from the heart of the book.

There is certainly an audience that will be swept away by the descriptive, immersive writing in this surreal, lyrical story. While that part certainly worked for me as well, the characters and plot just felt like they were constantly right beyond my grasp, and I would’ve loved to connect with both a little more. Thank you so much to NetGalley, the author and the publisher for an ARC in exchange for an honest review!

This is a dystopian fantasy about a girl who lives with her mother in an apartment building after a catastrophic event caused their community to be underwater. Education is hard to come by in this new world and, the girl being 11, is uber curious about a secretive tenant in their building and decides she needs to investigate. The story is about her antics.

I had to sit with this one for a little while. I guess I don't even know what I read. I feel like I needed the backstory about what exactly happened to their world to make it the way that it was. I feel like THAT could have been the more interesting story? There was a lot of things that I am still confused about, the herons and their significance being one.

I would give this book a 3.5 star rating. The mother's found profession was interesting, and Mr. Lamb was a character.

I must have skipped the part of the synopsis about the fantasy as this is not my usual favorite genre.

Obreht provides a glimpse into a very possible future and masterfully weaves in the myriad systemic issues--climate change, migration, economic collapse, power struggles, income inequality--that will shape any near future. Introducing the reader to the world through the eyes of a child was an ingenious method of world-building and I loved the protagonist and her family, blood and chosen, despite their flaws and missteps.

I received this book from NetGalley for this review.

This dystopian story takes place in some future version of this world in which climate change has caused whole cities to be submerged by sea-level rise. People are forced to seek refuge from the flooding as well as the wildfires and landslides. This story is about a displaced family that has had to try to find a new life in an unfamiliar place.

Silvia, age 11, and her mother end up in a place called Island City, sharing an apartment with Aunt Ena, the superintendent of a building called The Morningside. Silvia is lonely and bored, and becomes fascinated with some of the mythology that Ena shares from their original homeland. She becomes obsessed with a mysterious artist who lives in the penthouse of The Morningside. Silvia’s life is upended by her Aunt’s death and the arrival of a new friend and family.. Their past lives catch up with them and change the directions of their future.

The dystopian nature of this book in combination with the magical realism didn’t resonate with me.

One of those thought provoking stories you can’t put down. For me to come back quickly to an Ebook means it must be captivating! Check this one out for something profound but also… idk a joy to read. Feeling like no time was wasted on this. Thank you NG for the ARC.

This was an ambitious and somewhat disjointed read. The author’s writing style is poetic and engaging, but I personally wish we got more of a story about life in this not too distant future flooded upper west side of manhattan fever dream, and less about the sorcery and folklore plot line. But that’s just my personal preference! Overall an engaging read and definitely creative.

The Morningside is an enigmatic and heterogeneous novel that is highly enjoyable. Set in the not-so-distant future, it is essentially the story of a young girl named Silvia. With a dystopian setting, it is a coming-of-age story of family, the aching need for one's history, and the desire to make sense of one's world. While melancholic, the story also contains elements of mysticism, magic, and adventure. Sil hears stories of her homeland, a place she has no memory of, from her aunt Ena, whom she has only recently met. She is enraptured with the folktales and accounts of the beauty of where she came from. Her dull existence is further piqued when she meets a mysterious man, and a girl her age moves into her building. These events and Sil's nosy curiosity about the woman who lives in the penthouse with her three mammoth dogs form the crux of the story. Téa Obreht has created a delightfully imaginative novel that I found entertaining.
Thank you to NetGalley and Random House for the ARC of this book.

Sylvia and her mother settle in Moringside a former luxury building. They were upended from their homestead when Sly was a young child and her mother doesn’t talk of the past.
They settle with Elena the superintendent of the building and ultimately Slys aunt who tells very different stories of the past and the old homestead. Her mother doesn’t want Ena filling Slys head with fables of the past that they both have very different versions of!
Slys stories come to abrupt halt when they find her Aunt dead in the hallway. Her mother quickly assumes the new role of the Superintendent of the building.
Her mother shows Sly a vacant building and shows her the dream she has to run a cafe-
Will she ever get success with her language barrier…..

I loved Obreht’s The Tiger’s Wife and was eager to read this new offering. The story takes place in some future version of this world in which climate change has caused whole cities to be submerged by sea-level rise. People are forced to seek refuge from the flooding as well as the wildfires and landslides. This story is about a displaced family that has had to try to find a new life in an unfamiliar place. Obreht’s descriptions are vivid and atmospheric and the story dances along the edge of magical realism (whereas The Tiger’s Wife inhabited it fully). While there were times I was frustrated with the young protagonist, the suspense of the story kept me turning the pages to see how things turned out. Lovely.

Thanks to Random House and Netgalley for providing me with an ARC, in exchange for an honest and unbiased review. The US publication date is March 19, 2024.

I am very torn over this book. This was my first novel by Tea Obreht and while she writes beautifully, I could not really get into the story itself. For me, it lacks a certain context because we have no real background on this dystopian world. We have characters who have fled "back home" due to the horrors of war, and now they find themselves in a city governed by the tides and overrun with flooding. At the heart of it is an exploration of the relationships between mothers and daughters, but there's also a certain folktale quality in the stories Silvia's aunt tells her and the stories she tells herself to try and make sense of her new home (and her lack of any real memory of her life 'before'). And because of this, the majority of the story centers around Silvia's obsession with a mysterious older woman who lives in her building, Bezi Duras. And it just got to be too much for me. Silvia believes only she can see "a world beneath the world," but I felt as though the author couldn't decide if she wanted to fully embrace the magical, or chalk it up to Silvia being an impressionable kid. I expected more of an explanation and was disappointed by the lack of one, especially since so much of the story revolved around the mystery, or lack thereof, of Bezi. Despite not loving this particular story, I would be curious to try more of the author's books in the future because I really enjoyed her writing style.

I adored this dystopian novel about family and secrets and why we protect ourselves and our loved ones and how and what it means to be a refugee and a child refugee. Told from the point of view of young Silvia, who with her secretive mother has traveled far and wide, the narrative is one of mistakes and attempts to rectify those mistakes, yearning for stability and beauty and more than just survival, how the broken world appears to a child, and how stories are created and transmitted. The language is translucent and airy, dark and thick with danger, fairy-tale like, beguiling, and plaintive, all as needs must. It's a stunning work of writing, thought-provoking and rich.