Silvia

Tea Obreht

Eleven-year-old Silvia comes with her mother to live in Island City, reminiscent of Manhattan in the not too distant future. They move into The Morningside, a luxury high-rise hotel, with Silvia’s Aunt Ena, the building’s supervisor. Arriving from somewhere in the Balkans, they are part of a repopulation program aiming to balance the thinning density of the ruined city.

Silvia is put on a long wait list for a place in school. In the meantime, she helps her mother and aunt and listens to Ena’s tales of what “back home” was like, and the magical world beneath everyday reality. She is especially intrigued with a woman who lives in the penthouse, Bezi Duras, a painter who goes out at night with her three large, black dogs. Aunt Ena believes she is a Vila, an enchantress, also from “back home.”

Because her mother will tell her nothing about her origins, Silvia listens to Aunt Ena’s stories and is thrilled with the photographs and scrapbooks Ena keeps. She makes “protections” from three meaningful items and tries to live within the “rules” Ena, as well as her mother, set out. Ena dies suddenly, while working, and Silvia’s mother quietly takes over as the building supervisor.

When skulking around the base of the elevator to the penthouse, Silvia meets Louis May who offers her a key in exchange for letters which may have accumulated in the building for him. Silvia, who wants to discover whether the Vila’s dogs turn into men during the day so she can prove it to her mother, takes him up on it. When she does take the elevator, she finds herself in a courtyard, not in the building.

Silvia is thrilled when a girl about her own age moves into the building with her parents. Mila is a rude, brazen girl, however, uninterested in the careful rituals Silvia has built to investigate the world beneath the everyday world. Together they follow Ms. Duras and her three dogs one night, but this does not result in any certainties other than frightening Silvia’s mother.

To make ends meet, Silvia’s mother takes a job diving for building reclamation projects. At this time, people are given rations each day. They have generally agreed not to eat meat and everyone in the city listens to a radio program relaying local news called “The Dispatch.” Silvia mops floors and takes requests from building residents. She also helps cater a meeting and a party at the penthouse, scandalized by the lavish platters of meat that emerge from a basement warehouse.

When a building collapses that Silvia’s mother is working in, Silvia is certain she isn’t dead, though it takes three days for rescuers to find her in an air pocket. During this time, Silvia stays with Mila’s parents and is befriended by Mila’s father. After her recovery, Silvia’s mother wants to thank them. She bakes a small cake and takes it to them. When she sees Mila’s father, however, she is horrified and demands that Silvia come away with her.

They escape in Ena’s small, battered car, but don’t get far. Silvia remembers Louis May, and they take refuge in his apartment. He turns out to be the dispatcher and Silvia’s mother tells all of Island City that Mila’s father is the war criminal who sent refugees, including Silvia’s father, in buses to “work,” though they were never heard from again. How could Island City allow such a man to live there?

The tables are turned, however, when Mila disappears and her father insists that Silvia’s mother has something to do with her kidnapping, holding up her photo to television cameras. Silvia and her mother cut and bleach their hair, hiding out at Louis May’s. Silvia is certain that Mila is not dead, though she does not return.

Years later, when she is 18, Silvia has moved out west, living in a cabin where there are still elk and eagles to be seen. Silvia’s mother visits from her home on the southern coast and they finally talk about the past. Her mother didn’t want Silvia to listen to Ena’s folkloric “nonsense,” telling Silvia that her family had grown up in a beautiful place of community and peace. But when it collapsed during the war, she couldn’t bear to think of it. She accepts the fact she can’t give Silvia what she has had, and that Silvia won’t be able to give her children what she has had either.

The sun shone, however, despite the fires in the west and the rising seas, and the night sky was full of an infinity of stars. Louis May, who also lives in the west, has caught some trout and is making them a beautiful dinner.

Silvia’s story is told in The Morningside [published 2024], Tea Obreht’s third novel. Obreht’s prose is rich and realistic with such a sense of wholeness that Silvia’s endless anxieties are at the same time grounded in the certainty that she will be taken care of. Obreht gives ample evidence to show us how refugees come in at the bottom of the pecking order, and are often duped. Without a strong sense of home, this makes things difficult. But Obreht’s powerful human values stand behind Silvia’s tenuous hold on the world, and we are rooting for her!