THE MORNINGSIDE

The author of Inland (2019) and The Tiger’s Wife (2011) takes a glimpse into the future.

Looking back on her life, a narrator called Silvia remembers emigrating to an island city (that might once have been New York) and moving into the Morningside with her mother. This apartment building is barely clinging to its former grandeur, but Sil and her mother count themselves lucky to be the beneficiaries of a program designed to repopulate a once-great metropolis that has been devastated by floods. Sil’s aunt Ena is the superintendent of the Morningside, and Ena not only tells Sil more than her mother wants her to know about their family’s past, but she also says just enough about the mysterious resident of the building’s penthouse to make Sil suspect that this woman is a Vila—a powerful, often vengeful, nature spirit from their homeland. As she did in her first novel, Obreht uses folklore as a tool for navigating war and displacement. Sil knows how the heroine in a fairy tale should behave but, when she suspects that she might be a fairy tale heroine, she does not want to be that girl. Sil is, as it turns out, an excellent guide to a world in which old rules don’t make sense. She’s skeptical and credulous and reticent by turns, but she also has instincts for self-preservation that maybe only the most vulnerable among us can understand. Obreht is offering a cautionary vision of what our future might look like, but she’s also asking questions that are as old as storytelling. What do we want to tell ourselves about ourselves? What do we try to hide from ourselves? And what’s the cost of our lives?

A captivating blend of science fiction and magical realism with a wonderfully engaging protagonist.