Nova Ren Suma: "A Room Away from the Wolves"

Title: A Room Away from the Wolves  [on Amazon | on Goodreads]
Series: None
Author: Nova Ren Suma [Site | Goodreads]
Genres: Contemporary with a Twist, Afterlife, Thriller/Mystery
Year: 2018
Age: 14+
Stars: 4.5/5
Pros: Quiet but mesmerising story that will both tug at your heart and make you wonder. Exquisite prose.
Cons: Full of mysteries that mostly remain unexplained (though this is part of the book's charm). There's at least one detail that doesn't fit the overall scheme.
WARNING! Domestic violence (off-page). Physical bullying. Touches upon suicidal thoughts, underage drinking and drugs.
Will appeal to: Those who appreciate an eerie, bittersweet tale with more questions than answers.

Blurb: Bina has never forgotten the time she and her mother ran away from home. Her mother promised they would hitchhike to the city to escape Bina’s cruel father and start over. But before they could even leave town, Bina had a new stepfather and two new stepsisters, and a humming sense of betrayal pulling apart the bond with her mother. Eight years later, Bina finds herself on the side of the road again. She has an old suitcase, a fresh black eye, and a room waiting for her at Catherine House, a young women’s residence in Greenwich Village with dark, magical secrets. As Bina’s lease begins to run out, and nightmare and memory get tangled, she will be forced to face the terrible truth of why she’s come to Catherine House and what it will cost for her to leave... (Amazon excerpt)

Review: Nova Ren Suma is not only a master at writing magical realism, but also at populating her books with girls you won't forget - imperfect, often openly flawed girls you can't but love and feel like protecting, because they're victims as well. This is the story of one of them.

LIES IN SLOW MOTION

This is one of those quiet books where not much happens, but what does slowly enthralls you, only to ultimately punch you in the gut. At its center, an ordinary girl who made some ordinary mistakes and paid too high a price, a magical mansion (with a resident ghost) that is both asylum and prison, and a supporting cast of young women full of secrets and quirks. Oh, and New York of course - not in its glamorous incarnation, but at its most intimate. Despite us landing in the middle of a magical realism scene in the very first, chronologically displaced chapter, when we go back at the start of Bina's journey, it's a slow progression of hints and half reveals, filtered by someone who is, for all purposes, an unreliable narrator - and very much in denial. But here's the thing - the truth is slippery here, and the reader, too, ends up pretending not to see (or getting too mesmerised by Suma's story and writing to be able to). There's enough of a contemporary setting and enough interactions out of Catherine's House to prevent not only Bina, but even us, to get the right perspective about what's going on. I chalk it up to the mansion creating its own reality bubble, inside which (and, it turns out, it's a big "inside") the magical and the mundane can coexist, and a truce - if fragile and showing its weak spots if you know how to look - can be maintained. [...]

FLAWS AND ALL

As it is the case with all Suma's books, this one is a love letter to women, especially those who go astray (both physically and metaphorically), because more often than not, they're been wronged or abused or deemed not worthy enough. But unlike her previous books (with the exception of The Walls Around Us), this one has a huge cast of girls (plus a couple of older women) - and even those who are barely on page leave a mark, and make us want to know more about them and how they ended up at Catherine's House. On one hand, the cast is lead by the enigmatic Monet, who befriends Bina and tells her stories (more like fascinating lies), who becomes an unspoken love interest, who does something daring that could ultimately free Bina herself. On the other hand, there's Dawn, Bina's mother, who lived at Catherine's House for a short while when she was young, who gave up her dreams only to walk right into an abusive relationship, who ended up betraying her own daughter but never stopped loving her. Monet might be your average manic pixie dream girl, and Dawn your average bad parent, except there are layers to them and their relationship with Bina, and there's never a point in the story where you don't feel sympathy for them, despite their faults - as you do with the main character all the while she's making her string of bad choices.

DON'T ASK

Fair warning: if you're looking for straight answers...or, um...answers at all, you won't find many in here - and well, that's kind of a rule with magical realism, but still. What is Catherine's House really? How does it affect the world outside? How did the girls end up there, and how is it that they can't seem to leave anymore? Why does a certain object seem to play a pivotal role in being able to free them? And why does Bina? But most of all, why was Bina's mother able to rent a room at the residence and to leave on her own terms, despite her not fitting the pattern of the other tenants? The latter is the only question that does bother me, to be honest, and the only reason why I detracted half a star from my rating. I love questions as much as answers, and I love to be able to fill the blanks and/or coming up with my own explanations - but Dawn's experience at Catherine House is at odds with the other girls', unless we want to infer that she established a precedent (but then again, she doesn't fit the overall scheme). Sorry I can't elaborate further - let's just say Dawn is in another league. This is just a small quibble really, and didn't prevent me from being utterly fascinated with this story...and the writing. Oh, the writing. You have to try Suma if you haven't already, if for the writing alone. Unless magical realism is not your jam, that is. Otherwise...what are you waiting for? 😉

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