The Morningside: A Novel

Description

From the critically beloved New York Times bestselling author of The Tigers Wife and Inland a sweeping novel of mothers and daughters displacement and belonging and wondrous tales of a world both fallen and new A multifaceted gift of a novel that only Tea Obreht could conjure onto paper.-Karen Russell author of Orange World and Other Stories Theres the world you can see. And then theres the one you cant. Welcome to the Morningside. After being expelled from their ancestral home in a not-so-distant future Silvia and her mother finally settle at the Morningside a crumbling luxury tower in a place called Island City where Silvias aunt Ena serves as the superintendent. Silvia feels unmoored in her new life because her mother has been so diligently secretive about their familys past and because the once-vibrant city where she lives is now half-underwater. Silvia knows almost nothing about the place where she was born and spent her early years nor does she fully understand why she and her mother had to leave. But in Ena there is an opening: 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 Silvias lonely and impoverished reality. Enchanted by Enas 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. Silvias mission to unravel the truth about this womans 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.