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A review by curlycharcoal
The House in Smyrna by Tatiana Salem Levy
3.5
this is advertised as a story on the road; the narrator's trip from Brazil to Turkey, to explore her family's past. from a country i love to the old country i left behind. i have never bought a book faster.
except it has little to do with the road or those places. it's a book about pain, love, family and leaving. it comes in the shape of a vignette spanning three generations across three continents. the common thread across all is the silence and the phrase that keeps coming up; "silence is dangerous". it's her dangerous prose where Levy speaks the loudest in this book.
the pieces vary from a single sentence to a dozen pages. it's a demanding book. it wants the reader's presence and attention as they get teleported in emotion and time, abruptly getting dropped in the middle of a scene like a forgotten memory one stumbles upon accidentally. with no introductions and barely any clues, no overhead of narration, one finds themselves as the narrator. a masterfully unreliable one that keeps you on your toes.
except it has little to do with the road or those places. it's a book about pain, love, family and leaving. it comes in the shape of a vignette spanning three generations across three continents. the common thread across all is the silence and the phrase that keeps coming up; "silence is dangerous". it's her dangerous prose where Levy speaks the loudest in this book.
the pieces vary from a single sentence to a dozen pages. it's a demanding book. it wants the reader's presence and attention as they get teleported in emotion and time, abruptly getting dropped in the middle of a scene like a forgotten memory one stumbles upon accidentally. with no introductions and barely any clues, no overhead of narration, one finds themselves as the narrator. a masterfully unreliable one that keeps you on your toes.