Floods of dread in dystopian city rich with magic
TTHE MORNINGSIDE
Téa Obreht Weidenfeld & Nicholson, €21 éa Obreht’s debut novel The Tiger’s Wife was an international sensation when it was published in 2011. Set in the former Yugoslavia, where Obreht was born, the novel works in a magical-realist tradition with many surrealistic elements, including a deathless man. Obreht’s second novel Inland brought readers back in time to America’s Wild West together with orphans, immigrants and grave-robbers.
In her new novel, Obreht – named by The New Yorker as one of the 20 best American fiction writers under 40 – catapults us into a post-apocalyptic culture with what Silvia (Sil), the narrator of The Morningside, describes as an old familiar dread. In this new fantastical novel, the world has been overwhelmed by floods, and Sil has been forced to emigrate to an island city, closely resembling New York, and moved with her mother into an apartment building, the enigmatic fortress of The Morningside, with its warm, humming density and magical dimensions.
The once luxury tower has seen better days, but conveniently its superintendent is Eva, Sil’s own aunt. She acts as a connection to the ancient homeland Silvia had to leave behind, a land her mother has remained tightlipped, even secretive, about. This is despite the fact that Sil and her mother share a language from the old country with some of the other Morningside residents, a language called Ours. When Sil and her mother encounter another tenant, for example, from “Back Home”, Sil’s mother dismisses Sil’s curiosity by saying: “I don’t want you wasting time with mannerless little shits.”
Sil reacts, but her mother taunts her with the mysterious question: “Whose side were they on during the war?”
Sil is trying to figure out her place in a world that is in peril and out of joint. Her bond with the place she has fled is tenuous, but she needs that bond to make her whole.
In fact, near the end of the novel her mother tells her: “You were born in a place that no longer exists.” And it’s this sense of loss and yearning, this existential absence which is at the centre of Sil’s character.
The novel is full of other enchanting characters. There’s Bezi Duras, who is also from Back Home, but she only speaks a little of Ours. There is also Mila, who Sil befriends. Mila reveals that there is a Vila, a kind of spirit, living in the apartment block. The ghost acts as a guide to another world, and propels the two girls on a perilous and moving adventure.
At times the reactions of the characters, and the simplicity of the dialogue makes this read like a young adult book. Here is a fairly typical reaction from Sil, about her mother: “It is actually beyond my powers to describe the look my mother cast my way. I had never seen it before. It should have reduced me to atoms where I stood, but I felt invincible.”
While this is a story which could be enjoyed by younger readers, that does not in any way take away from the depth of feeling within it. In that sense, it could be regarded as a crossover novel in many ways, bridging gaps between the real and the supernatural, the young and old, the present and the past.
It’s the tension between these opposites which gives the novel its energy.
The Morningside is an enjoyable, quick read, but what sets Obreht apart from her YA peers, is that like the best contemporary writers, she asks fundamental questions of storytelling, narration, and truth.
And these are, possibly, the most important questions a novelist can pose today.