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A review by dearfriendicanfly
The House of Discarded Dreams by Ekaterina Sedia
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.
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“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