The House of Discarded Dreams

I expected to like this far more than I did. Maybe my expectations made me like it a little less? Not sure. I preferred both 'Alchemy of Stone' and 'Secret History of Moscow.'
In 'House of Discarded Dreams,' teenager Vimbai is seeking her independence (and, especially, some distance from her overbearing mother's socio-political opinions). She moves into her own place for the first time, becoming roommates with another young woman and her strange roommate - a guy whose 'hair' is actually a bizarre pocket dimension. it only gets stranger from there, as soon their dilapidated beachside house is adrift on the waves, seemingly growing endless rooms - and the book is spewing a steady stream of surreal, unfocused philosophy.

There were aspects show more to the book I liked very much - it did accurately capture the inchoate but allusive feeling of dreaming - and I could empathize with Vimbai and her conflicted feeling about identity/growing up. But I still felt the book was missing something in its meanderings. show less

This is a difficult one to rate. I liked the ideas, and the imagination and the plot and several of the characters. But it's written third person from the point of view of a single character, and the style it was written in I found incredibly distancing, which made it very hard to get involved in the story. It all ended up being more of an exercise in intellectual curiosity than an involving book.

I really just wish Sedia could have written this in a more intimate style. If I'd been able to reach Vimbai, I'd have been able to connect to the story... and it would have been an absolutely fascinating read. Instead, it was just a potentially interesting story seen through layers of glass.

I didn't like this as much as the other books by Sedia that I've read, but I did still enjoy the weird, twisting story that mixes folk tales up in unexpected ways.

Five stars for weirdness. Four stars for the rest: Kind of a hybrid of Jeff VanderMeer and My Little Pony. Very well controlled wide cast of characters. Interesting use of African mythology. Still, a story about love and family and heritage. Well written.

Plot:
Vimbai is a student of marine biology in the US. Since she loves the ocean (and horseshoe crabs) and the tension with her Zimbabwean born mother, she’s very happy when she finds a room in a house right in the dunes. But things in the house are quite special: her roommate Felix’ hair is a portal to another universe. Her other roommate Maya has a pack of possum-like creatures following her. Soon Vimbai discovers a Psychic Energy Baby in the house’s phone line and her dead African grandmother shows up. And that’s when the house drifts out on the ocean.

The House of Discarded Dreams is a weird book. It’s a book I expected to love because it’s so right up my alley, but it took me so long to get into it that it barely mattered show more anymore when I finally did.

Read more on my blog: http://kalafudra.wordpress.com/2011/08/02/the-house-of-discarded-dreams-ekaterin... show less

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