The House of Discarded Dreams

by Ekaterina Sedia

Overview

• Trying to escape her embarrassing immigrant mother, Vimbai moves into adilapidated house in the dunes... and discovers that one of her new roommateshas a pocket universe instead of hair, there's a psychic energy baby living inthe telephone wires, and her dead Zimbabwean grandmother is doing dishes in thekitchen. When the house gets lost at sea and creatures of African urban legendsall but take it over, Vimbai turns to horseshoe crabs in the ocean to ask fortheir help in getting home to New Jersey.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781607012283
Publisher:	Prime Books
Publication date:	11/16/2010
Pages:	320
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 8.00(h) x 1.00(d)

Editorial Reviews

Lyrical writing and rich imagination compensate for loose plotting in this quirky, joyous fantasy. College student Vimbai moves to a house on the New Jersey shore to escape her bickering parents. Her housemates are a bit unusual: Maya is being followed by a pack of mystical animals, and Felix has a black hole sitting on his head. As the house drifts out to sea, Vimbai's grandmother's ghost starts doing housework and giving advice. Felix draws a "Psychic Energy Baby" out of the phone lines, and the house expands to include forests and lakes. Vimbai's biggest concern is whether missing classes will affect her application to grad school. Somehow, the overall effect is dreamily compelling rather than farcical, as Sedia (The Secret History of Moscow) shows how competing natural and supernatural worldviews can enrich each other. (Aug.)

Publishers Weekly

When Vimbai rents a room in a ramshackle house on the dunes of a New Jersey beach, she hopes to escape a mother who embarrasses her. Instead, she finds a roommate with a strange ability to separate objects into their component parts, a psychic-energy baby living in the telephone wires, and the ghost of her Zimbabwean grandmother inhabiting her kitchen. One day, the house floats out to sea, and Vimbai must find a way to return home. Sedia (The Secret History of Moscow) crafts a tale of magical realism that explores the connections between culture and identity as well as the nature of reality and dreams. VERDICT Humor and metaphysics blend in an elegantly written story of a woman's quest for her true home and should appeal to fans of James P. Blaylock and Jonathan Carroll.

Library Journal