Welcome to Litsy!

In a dystopian city partially underwater, our preteen narrator lives as part of a “repopulation program�. She and her mother and aunt live in a high rise just outside the flooded zones, and all 3 work as supers for the building. Her aunt tells her folklore from their old country, and convinces her that the woman in the penthouse has a sinister supernatural secret.

A low pick for me.

It‘s a low pick for this one. Interesting premise and an unexpected storyline but it never quite came together. The mother/daughter relationship was meant to be a central point of the novel but it didn‘t feel fully fleshed out to me, though I liked how the final chapters reframed some of the earlier events.

Enjoying a few minutes by the pool in between newborn feeds! Am about halfway through this book and not sure what to make of it, it‘s not exactly what I was expecting from Obreht after her previous novels (I loved Tiger‘s Wife). But it‘s engaging and an easy read, which is necessary for me right now!

It took me a while to get into the world of this novel, and I'm not sure that I ever completely got my bearings. The writing style is lighter than the story, which is continually unsettling. It reminds me a little of Poor Deer and other novels narrated by children navigating grown-up worlds. I'm not sure I was in the mood for another dystopian novel, but these days, I want to know that life goes on even after things we take for granted fall apart.

"And I realized that I'd brought you into life at a time when everyone else's debts had come due. Only, the debtors weren't around anymore to pay up. So it'd be you doing the paying."

Oof. I have had this same thought many times during quiet moments since my children were born.

Beautiful, thoughtful, and deeply kind, The Morningside is about coming-of-age is a changed and changing world.