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suzemo's review against another edition
3.0
I have this book on kindle, however, I grabbed the audiobook because it is read by Robin Miles, one of my favorite narrators. I love Kat Sedia - her stuff is very inventive and very different from most books.
This is a coming of age story with a main character named Vimbai, a college student who is studying marine biology. She is the daughter of Zimbabwean immigrants, and she wishes to escape both her over-bearing mother and her African/Zimbabwean culture and be a "typical" New Jersey college student. As she is wandering through the dunes, she finds a notice for a household looking for a roommate. The house is also in the dunes, and features two roommates, Felix, a pale man who has a micro-universe for hair and Maya, a bartender from Atlantic city.
Everything starts out strange, with creatures living under the porch, a link to the horseshoe crabs Vimbai wishes to study, and a "psychic energy baby" in the phone lines. Then things go utterly, and fantastically wack-a-loo, with the house sailing off into the sea, and changing shape and size. African urban folk tale characters appear in the house, like Vimbai's dead grandmother, a Man-Fish, and the wazimamoto (vampire like creatures who suck the blood from the horseshoe crabs, and symbolically the African Culture from Vimbai).
Vimbai has to come to terms with her family and her culture as she finds solutions to the fantastical situations and conflicts that arise, and in that sense it is a coming of age (or coming of culture?) story.
The story can be taken at face value, but I think the strength lies in the face that all of the characters, events, and actions in the story have a deeper meaning (without bludgeoning one over the head). It's well written, and I think it's a good story, it just might have been asking too much of me at the time I read/listened to it. The characterizations are pretty solid and I liked it; I might revisit it at a later time, though, as I felt I wasn't giving this book the attention it deserved.
This is a coming of age story with a main character named Vimbai, a college student who is studying marine biology. She is the daughter of Zimbabwean immigrants, and she wishes to escape both her over-bearing mother and her African/Zimbabwean culture and be a "typical" New Jersey college student. As she is wandering through the dunes, she finds a notice for a household looking for a roommate. The house is also in the dunes, and features two roommates, Felix, a pale man who has a micro-universe for hair and Maya, a bartender from Atlantic city.
Everything starts out strange, with creatures living under the porch, a link to the horseshoe crabs Vimbai wishes to study, and a "psychic energy baby" in the phone lines. Then things go utterly, and fantastically wack-a-loo, with the house sailing off into the sea, and changing shape and size. African urban folk tale characters appear in the house, like Vimbai's dead grandmother, a Man-Fish, and the wazimamoto (vampire like creatures who suck the blood from the horseshoe crabs, and symbolically the African Culture from Vimbai).
Vimbai has to come to terms with her family and her culture as she finds solutions to the fantastical situations and conflicts that arise, and in that sense it is a coming of age (or coming of culture?) story.
The story can be taken at face value, but I think the strength lies in the face that all of the characters, events, and actions in the story have a deeper meaning (without bludgeoning one over the head). It's well written, and I think it's a good story, it just might have been asking too much of me at the time I read/listened to it. The characterizations are pretty solid and I liked it; I might revisit it at a later time, though, as I felt I wasn't giving this book the attention it deserved.
scheu's review against another edition
4.0
THODD is one of those books that starts off in one particular direction and after about 30 pages takes a drastic 90-degree turn, ventures off in a different, completely weird direction, and never really comes back. It struck me that none of the main characters ever really reacted to the strangeness around them. They must be pretty resilient people, or maybe just used to that kind of thing (phantom limbs, cranial black holes and talking catfish). I feel like it all gelled well enough, though. I've read three novels by Sedia and none of them are the least bit similiar. This bodes well for her future.
sausome's review against another edition
5.0
Amazing, absolutely amazing! I loved this book -- full of fantastically fantastical goings on, as Ekaterina Sedia is so good at. I also loved that the main character, Vimbai, is studying marine biology and loves horseshoe crabs. She's also the daughter of Zimbabwean parents, migrating to New Jersey when she was little. She has battled her whole life with her identity as an American, Zimbabwean, black-but not black enough for her American peers, African-but not African enough for her Africana Studies professor-mother. She moves out of her parents' house to a house on the Jersey dunes, with two other people -- Maya and Felix. Strange things start happening, such as the ghost of Vimbai's African grandmother showing up, Felix extracts a "psychic energy baby" from the phone lines and his hair is more apparently a kind of wavy black hole atop his head, and their house floats onto the ocean and begins changing into their dreams and imaginations on the inside. Vimbai remembers African tales from childhood that her grandmother told her and her Kenyan babysitter told her, and these start appearing in the house (like the catfish "man-fish" who is huge, long-lived, and an eater of souls). She also evaluates her sexuality and her strong love for a girl in 8th grade, with whom she never really talked to much, just admired from afar, and considers her feelings for Maya in her new home. Maya deals with her grandmother's death, leaving her alone in the world, while Vimbai realizes she has more in common with her mother and father than she thought -- she's been trying so hard to deny the African within her, and her heritage, irritated with how much her mother criticizes America and gets angry about assumptions people make about Africans; she's also enraged that a white man is head of the Africana Studies department at the university where she works. The writing was gorgeous, full of luscious descriptions, and there were so many layers to the story that I almost want to read it again right now!
sassispring's review against another edition
3.0
If you aren't a fan of fantasy, this is not the book for you. This story is pure fantasy and symbolism. It is a painting that is being created as you read, a painting that is both abstract and reality, wrapped up together. It is a hard story to explain, as it is not based on the real world yet is is symbolically representing personal journeys and family connections. It is a layered story, that goes deeper than it is written and in my opinion, the author weaves a beautiful story. I recommend this book to anyone who enjoys reading underneath the words and loves fantasy.
jerseygrrrl's review against another edition
I abandoned ship. I couldn't finish the book. I'm not convinced, though, that I don't like this book. It has a lot going for it: intense creativity, interesting characters, utterly unpredictable plot. It just wasn't the right read for me at this time.
mdpenguin's review
adventurous
emotional
funny
reflective
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
5.0
This is an excellent surrealist story about the child of immigrants coming to terms with her own feelings about herself and the cultural heritage that she felt forced upon her through a magical world born out of a house with very cheap rent and some very odd occupants. It was a delight to read and it reinforced my decision never to have a ground line again now that I know how they can trap psychic energy babies.
dearfriendicanfly's review against another edition
emotional
funny
hopeful
reflective
sad
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
I really loved this book. I really, really loved it. The prose is beautiful, the characters are so fun and engaging, the paranormal goings on are so interesting and I love how the absurdity can be both funny and so painfully real. Vimbai, Maya, and Felix’s troubles are portrayed with such tenderness and understanding, and their relationships with one another are so interesting. And the imagery!! Gosh. Just look at these quotes.
Her grandmother’s sight entered her own like a hand enters an empty glove. Vimbai had been hollow and now she had a center, a depth, a density—she felt three dimensional and alive and aware.
-
“Some dreams you leave behind,” the vadzimu answered, her voice especially old and desiccated today. “Some dreams you discard along your way, like your baby clothes. They litter your past, like small corpses, like shed skins.”
-
Only Felix knew, what it was like to cut an umbilicus that bound one to the universe that bore him, and to wear the spectral navel that still festered with the remnants of the enclosed space and its dark inhabitants. A dying tiny universe, and poor Felix dangled on the end of it(…)
Beautifully written. Gosh. Just… gosh.
The reason I give it four stars rather than five is that at times, it really doesn’t feel like Sedia’s story to tell. Vimbai being black and her parents’ immigration to the USA are very central to her character and to the story. Ekaterina Sedia is a white Russian author who did indeed immigrate to the USA to pursue a Ph.D., but so much of Vimbai’s story is so specifically about blackness and African diaspora culture and folklore that at times, I found myself really wishing that this story was coming from someone with that lived experience. I certainly cringed at the way that it opened with Vimbai and her parents discussing Obama lmfao. And at times it felt like Sedia was expressing sentiments through Vimbai that weren’t really hers to express about Zimbabwean culture. But overall, I still really enjoyed the story, and I’m sure that Sedia did her due diligence with consulting experts and sensitivity readers. There was nothing bad, just a sort of lingering awareness of the lack of perspective.
Overall, still definitely one of my favorite books I’ve read in the past few years, and one that I think about and quote so so often. Really beautiful book.
Her grandmother’s sight entered her own like a hand enters an empty glove. Vimbai had been hollow and now she had a center, a depth, a density—she felt three dimensional and alive and aware.
-
“Some dreams you leave behind,” the vadzimu answered, her voice especially old and desiccated today. “Some dreams you discard along your way, like your baby clothes. They litter your past, like small corpses, like shed skins.”
-
Only Felix knew, what it was like to cut an umbilicus that bound one to the universe that bore him, and to wear the spectral navel that still festered with the remnants of the enclosed space and its dark inhabitants. A dying tiny universe, and poor Felix dangled on the end of it(…)
Beautifully written. Gosh. Just… gosh.
The reason I give it four stars rather than five is that at times, it really doesn’t feel like Sedia’s story to tell. Vimbai being black and her parents’ immigration to the USA are very central to her character and to the story. Ekaterina Sedia is a white Russian author who did indeed immigrate to the USA to pursue a Ph.D., but so much of Vimbai’s story is so specifically about blackness and African diaspora culture and folklore that at times, I found myself really wishing that this story was coming from someone with that lived experience. I certainly cringed at the way that it opened with Vimbai and her parents discussing Obama lmfao. And at times it felt like Sedia was expressing sentiments through Vimbai that weren’t really hers to express about Zimbabwean culture. But overall, I still really enjoyed the story, and I’m sure that Sedia did her due diligence with consulting experts and sensitivity readers. There was nothing bad, just a sort of lingering awareness of the lack of perspective.
Overall, still definitely one of my favorite books I’ve read in the past few years, and one that I think about and quote so so often. Really beautiful book.
Content Warnings
Minor: Self harm