We may receive an affiliate commission from anything you buy from this article.
"The Morningside" (Random House) is the latest novel by Téa Obreht (the New York Times bestselling author of "The Tiger's Wife" and "Inland"), set in a future metropolis ravaged by climate change.
Read an excerpt below.
"The Morningside" by Téa Obreht
Prefer to listen? Audible has a 30-day free trial available right now.
Long ago, before the desert, when my mother and I first arrived in Island City, we moved to a tower called the Morningside, where my aunt had already been serving as superintendent for about ten years.
The Morningside had been the jewel of an upper-city neighborhood called Battle Hill for more than a century. Save for the descendants of a handful of its original residents, however, the tower was, and looked, deserted. It reared above the park and the surrounding townhomes with just a few lighted windows skittering up its black edifice like notes of an unfinished song, here-and-there brightness all the way to the thirty third floor, where Bezi Duras's penthouse windows blazed, day and night, in all directions.
Upon our arrival, it was evident that the majority of people, especially the target demographic of such towers, had evacuated the city to escape the deprivation, decay, and encroaching water, seeking refuge in small freshwater communities upriver. Those who remained in the city fell into one of two categories: individuals like my aunt, mother, and myself, newcomers brought in by the federal Repopulation Program to prevent complete urban abandonment, or the resilient locals clinging to their diminishing neighborhoods, hopeful that with the right leadership and functioning tide pumps, things would return to normal.
The ownership of the Morningside had changed hands multiple times and was now under the management of a man named Popovich, hailing from our homeland in the old country, which was how my aunt had come to be employed by him.
Ena was our only living relative—or so I assumed, because she was the only one my mother ever talked about, the one in whose direction we were always moving as we ticked around the world. As a result, she had come to occupy valuable real estate in my imagination. This was helped by the fact that my mother, who never volunteered intelligence of any kind, had given me very little from which to assemble my mental prototype of her. There were no pictures of Ena, no stories. I wasn't even sure if she was my mother's aunt, or mine, or just a sort of general aunt, related by blood to nobody. The only time I'd spoken to her, when we called from Paraiso to share the good news that our Repopulation papers had finally come through, my mother had waited until the line began to ring before whispering, "Remember, her wife just died, so don't forget to mention Beanie," before thrusting the receiver into my hand. I'd never even heard of the wife, this "Beanie" person, until that very moment.
Get the book here:
"The Morningside" by Téa Obreht
Buy locally from Bookshop.org
For more info:
-
"The Morningside" by Téa Obreht (Random House), in Hardcover, Large Print Trade Paperback, eBook and Audio formats
