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Grey Skies: The Quiet Things Nobody Knows
It's always easy at the start and then as you grow up you become part of this world and things change. People change. They were all the same, thinking that they were big fish in a small, that they were destined for greater things, that they were more, they were dreamers who never stopped dreaming and then everything fell apart.
For Eliza and Amy, moving out of their parent's house and away from each other was supposed to be the best thing that could have happened to them but when their lives are completely wrecked, they found each other and became sisters again.
When august comes home, he falls most unexpectedly in line for his father's legacy and finds that isn't measure in bank account and pent houses. Caleb wakes up one day to see the shipwreck his life has become and doesn't know where to go from there. He doesn't know who he is anymore. Is he the hero or the villain? Eva and Lucas battle the continuing heaviness of daily life and deal with their losses through each other. One by one they all come home battered and bruised by their hardships. But how long can they look for silver linings in the darkening skies? How long does it take to get over the things you have been through? How long can you go on?
For Eliza and Amy, moving out of their parent's house and away from each other was supposed to be the best thing that could have happened to them but when their lives are completely wrecked, they found each other and became sisters again.
When august comes home, he falls most unexpectedly in line for his father's legacy and finds that isn't measure in bank account and pent houses. Caleb wakes up one day to see the shipwreck his life has become and doesn't know where to go from there. He doesn't know who he is anymore. Is he the hero or the villain? Eva and Lucas battle the continuing heaviness of daily life and deal with their losses through each other. One by one they all come home battered and bruised by their hardships. But how long can they look for silver linings in the darkening skies? How long does it take to get over the things you have been through? How long can you go on?
- GenresFiction
373 pages, Kindle Edition
First published February 1, 2015
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459 people want to read
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Displaying 1 of 1 review
November 9, 2017
I started this book lying on a beach on an overcast day—I thought it a fitting time and place to start a book entitled Grey Skies. Within the first ten pages, I knew that this was not the beach read I had thought it to be. Instead, I was presented with a fresh take on the quarter-life crisis that was so deliciously dark and demented that I forgot to reapply my sunscreen.
Dahiya's debut novel follows several young people in the naissance of their independent life. The relationships between its main cast are what drive the action forward in this novel fundamentally about deception: deception of the self, of others, and—most interestingly—of the reader. Dahiya states in the novel that love is the eighth deadly sin, and this is proven time and time again throughout the plot of this page-turner. Whether it is for one's self or for another, love is routinely punished in this refreshingly, if brutally, honest book about how relationships grow, disintegrate, and come back together as something else entirely.
Dahiya is not afraid of switching his narrative methods. Chapter to chapter, and sometimes paragraph to paragraph, the reader is allowed to peek into someone else's mind to see what they consider reality. This limited but omniscient style has the benefit of making the reader understand the characters' confusions while also obfuscating any authorial, capital-T truth. I finished the novel without any certainty as to what actually happened, what was just a figment of the imaginations of the characters, or what was just me manufacturing reality in a refusal of ambiguity.
One character's narrative in particular left me questioning reality because of the stream-of-consciousness style, reminiscent of Bret Easton Ellis in Glamorama, that Dahiya employed to draw the reader into the character's drug-induced mania. I had to put down the book several times in this section to keep from dissociating from my surroundings.
Dahiya chose several motifs to drive this articulately confusing novel forward. Most characters spend a lot of time in the mirror, wondering about the person that they see looking back at them—sometimes to unsettling effect for the reader. Self-harm is also a recurrent theme, with characters contemplating, acting on, or remembering times when they physically or emotionally left marks on their person. Something I personally found interesting was the importance of clothing throughout the novel. Characters will often judge themselves or others by what they are wearing; and it is made clear to the reader that this superficial judgment, as opposed to the deep, soul-searching variety of the mirror, is where most of the characters prefer to remain.
Dahiya's debut pushes the reader to question their intentions when it comes to love. Are we dressing up our relationships for others to view, afraid of what would be waiting for us in the mirror? Or are we willing to look at the scars and bruises of our reality, to forego the illusion of perfection, and allow the sun of truth to scatter the clouds of our grey skies?
Five stars. I look forward to what comes next from this promising author.
Dahiya's debut novel follows several young people in the naissance of their independent life. The relationships between its main cast are what drive the action forward in this novel fundamentally about deception: deception of the self, of others, and—most interestingly—of the reader. Dahiya states in the novel that love is the eighth deadly sin, and this is proven time and time again throughout the plot of this page-turner. Whether it is for one's self or for another, love is routinely punished in this refreshingly, if brutally, honest book about how relationships grow, disintegrate, and come back together as something else entirely.
Dahiya is not afraid of switching his narrative methods. Chapter to chapter, and sometimes paragraph to paragraph, the reader is allowed to peek into someone else's mind to see what they consider reality. This limited but omniscient style has the benefit of making the reader understand the characters' confusions while also obfuscating any authorial, capital-T truth. I finished the novel without any certainty as to what actually happened, what was just a figment of the imaginations of the characters, or what was just me manufacturing reality in a refusal of ambiguity.
One character's narrative in particular left me questioning reality because of the stream-of-consciousness style, reminiscent of Bret Easton Ellis in Glamorama, that Dahiya employed to draw the reader into the character's drug-induced mania. I had to put down the book several times in this section to keep from dissociating from my surroundings.
Dahiya chose several motifs to drive this articulately confusing novel forward. Most characters spend a lot of time in the mirror, wondering about the person that they see looking back at them—sometimes to unsettling effect for the reader. Self-harm is also a recurrent theme, with characters contemplating, acting on, or remembering times when they physically or emotionally left marks on their person. Something I personally found interesting was the importance of clothing throughout the novel. Characters will often judge themselves or others by what they are wearing; and it is made clear to the reader that this superficial judgment, as opposed to the deep, soul-searching variety of the mirror, is where most of the characters prefer to remain.
Dahiya's debut pushes the reader to question their intentions when it comes to love. Are we dressing up our relationships for others to view, afraid of what would be waiting for us in the mirror? Or are we willing to look at the scars and bruises of our reality, to forego the illusion of perfection, and allow the sun of truth to scatter the clouds of our grey skies?
Five stars. I look forward to what comes next from this promising author.
Displaying 1 of 1 review