Jenny Shank | (TNS) Star Tribune
In the future, in a world where the coasts are flooding and wildfires are raging, a young refugee girl named Silvia and her mother move to the Morningside.
In a run-down tall building situated in the remains of a sunken city called Island City, they come across Ena, their only surviving relative from their home country. Ena suggests that the woman living in the penthouse with her large black dogs has the ability to create shapeshifters. Silvia believes the woman is a “Vila,” a kind of enchantress, but wants to confirm this before sharing with her skeptical mother. This marks the beginning of Téa Obreht’s fascinating third book “The Morningside.”
Silvia is the “tallest 11-year-old you’ve ever seen: gangly, shapeless” and her mother is tiny, “like a fairy person.” Silvia’s mother has forbidden her to speak their native language and she never “volunteered intelligence of any kind.”
The residents of Island City search for news through online forums and a pirate radio station named the Drowned City Dispatch, restricted by “Posterity Measures” to a limited diet. Ena has been working as The Morningside’s superintendent for years, and since Silvia has no luck enrolling in school, she starts assisting Ena with her tasks. Much of the building is empty, except for a few wealthy old “janglers,” whom Ena refers to as “the kind of person who wore all their jewelry at once.”
Silvia is very curious, particularly about information from their past that her mother conceals and the Vila’s abilities. But she’s also cautious, hiding talismans around the building as protection against disaster. One day, Silvia meets a brave girl named Mila, “unafraid, because she had no sense of a world beneath the world. Everything to her was as it was on its face.” Mila pushes Silvia in her quest for discovery.
Try reading 10 pages of this book and resisting its enchantment. This story immerses the reader into its dreamlike world just as the Morningside sinks into the island it occupies. With a bold young main character exploring a once luxurious building, this novel combines the appeal of “Eloise” and “Harriet the Spy,” the timeless allure of folklore and futuristic magic similar to what animated Mohsin Hamid’s amazing “Exit West.” In this uncertain world, adults hold secrets that Silvia is determined to uncover.
Obreht is a natural, gifted storyteller with a direct connection to the collective unconscious. She blends humor and tragedy, warmth and toughness, mystery and magic, constructing her plot from human curiosity and connection. She writes as if she belongs to a lineage of storytellers who entertained around campfires, with such confidence that a reader knows all the peculiar elements and remarkable characters she introduces will come together into a haunting and meaningful tale.
As reality becomes increasingly strange, we need a writer like Obreht who can envision the future of our species in a way that feels genuine. In the world she imagines, there is loss, but beauty endures. As tall cranes nest in rooftop water towers, hope for human connection persists among the diverse people who have managed to survive.
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The Morningside
By: Téa Obreht.
Publisher: Random House, 287 pages, $29.
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