What do you think?
Rate this book
Daughters of the Air
"A chilling and beautiful novel that has left its indelible mark on me—I am simply in awe of Anca Szilagyi's prose."—Karen Russell, author of Swamplandia!, Finalist for the Pulitzer Prize
When Pluta’s father, a university professor, disappears amid the turmoil of Argentina’s Dirty War, her family’s idyllic life crumbles. Unsure where he’s been taken or whether he’s even alive, Pluta and her mother struggle to cope with the disappearance—and to voice their fears and pain to one another.
Exiled to a boarding school in New York and churning with unresolved grief, Pluta runs away to Brooklyn in 1980. Her harrowing and surreal experiences on the dangerous streets soon threaten to destroy her completely—but may also at last break through the suffocating silence that has held her family captive.
Magical realist imagery infuses the landscape of devastation wrought by political repression in Anca L. Szilagyi’s searing coming-of-age novel, which Shelf Awareness calls “a striking debut from a writer to watch.”
When Pluta’s father, a university professor, disappears amid the turmoil of Argentina’s Dirty War, her family’s idyllic life crumbles. Unsure where he’s been taken or whether he’s even alive, Pluta and her mother struggle to cope with the disappearance—and to voice their fears and pain to one another.
Exiled to a boarding school in New York and churning with unresolved grief, Pluta runs away to Brooklyn in 1980. Her harrowing and surreal experiences on the dangerous streets soon threaten to destroy her completely—but may also at last break through the suffocating silence that has held her family captive.
Magical realist imagery infuses the landscape of devastation wrought by political repression in Anca L. Szilagyi’s searing coming-of-age novel, which Shelf Awareness calls “a striking debut from a writer to watch.”
264 pages, Paperback
First published December 5, 2017
9 people are currently reading
662 people want to read
About the author
Anca L. Szilagyi
6 books153 followersAnca Szilagyi is the author of Daughters of the Air, which Shelf Awareness called "a striking debut from a writer to watch." The Seattle Review of Books named Daughters of the Air a favorite novel of 2017, calling it "a creation of unearthly talents." Dreams Under Glass, her second novel, was called "a novel for our modern times" by Buzzfeed Books. Her short fiction appears in Gastronomica, Fairy Tale Review, Washington City Paper, and elsewhere. Her nonfiction appears in Orion Magazine, the Los Angeles Review of Books, Electric Literature, Salon, The Rumpus, Jewish in Seattle, and on the Ploughshares blog. She was awarded grants and fellowships from 4Culture, Made at Hugo House, and Jack Straw and is the inaugural winner of the Artist Trust / LaSalle Storyteller Award. The Stranger hailed Anca as one of the "fresh new faces in Seattle fiction" and "a fantastic magical realist." Originally from Brooklyn, she has lived in Montreal, Seattle, and now Chicago.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 30 of 59 reviews
October 25, 2017
3.5 stars
This is a powerful story about a young girl from Argentina whose father “was disappeared" during the Dirty War in Argentina ( https://www.britannica.com/event/Dirt...) Tatiana, who calls herself Pluta at 12 , found it difficult to understand that her father wasn't coming back and at 14 imagining and still hoping he'd come back . She has more of a loving relationship with her father, Daniel, a sociology professor than with her mother . Isabel is concerned with her looks and her clothes and how she looked to others, angry at Daniel for what he might have said or done to be taken away. Perhaps grieving in her own way, she does make attempts to find out what happened to him. I did not find her to be a very likable character, especially when she sends Pluta away to a boarding school in Connecticut, shutting her confused and grieving daughter out to deal with this on her own.
Pluta runs away from the boarding school to New York City . I was afraid for her from the moment she runs, for very good reason I soon discovered. Perhaps like the fate of many teenage runaways, she finds herself in situations and activities she really doesn’t understand - the danger of the seedy day to day life on the streets, in the bushes. She is confused and uncertain. I just wanted to scream at her, hug her, rescue her from the awful things that happen to her. The narrative also moves back two years earlier in 1978 and we get in these alternating chapters how Pluta came to be where she was. We also get glimpses of Isabel's thoughts.
This was going to be a 4 star book for me until around the last third. Some things happen that confused me . Was it magical realism or delusion , a dream ? Whatever it was, it took away for me from a serious, heart wrenching story and I was a little disappointed. I should have paid more attention to the description that mentions “fabulist imagery” or by the cover . For me it would have been a more powerful story without it . Even with that reservation, I have to say this is a beautifully written story filled with terrific descriptive writing of the places in Argentina, Brazil and the streets and buildings of New York City and Rome, and a revealing story about this awful time in Argentina's history. I can't quite give it 4 stars but I will definitely watch for what Anca Szilagyi writes in the future.
I received an advanced copy of this book from Lanternfish Press through NetGalley.
This is a powerful story about a young girl from Argentina whose father “was disappeared" during the Dirty War in Argentina ( https://www.britannica.com/event/Dirt...) Tatiana, who calls herself Pluta at 12 , found it difficult to understand that her father wasn't coming back and at 14 imagining and still hoping he'd come back . She has more of a loving relationship with her father, Daniel, a sociology professor than with her mother . Isabel is concerned with her looks and her clothes and how she looked to others, angry at Daniel for what he might have said or done to be taken away. Perhaps grieving in her own way, she does make attempts to find out what happened to him. I did not find her to be a very likable character, especially when she sends Pluta away to a boarding school in Connecticut, shutting her confused and grieving daughter out to deal with this on her own.
Pluta runs away from the boarding school to New York City . I was afraid for her from the moment she runs, for very good reason I soon discovered. Perhaps like the fate of many teenage runaways, she finds herself in situations and activities she really doesn’t understand - the danger of the seedy day to day life on the streets, in the bushes. She is confused and uncertain. I just wanted to scream at her, hug her, rescue her from the awful things that happen to her. The narrative also moves back two years earlier in 1978 and we get in these alternating chapters how Pluta came to be where she was. We also get glimpses of Isabel's thoughts.
This was going to be a 4 star book for me until around the last third. Some things happen that confused me . Was it magical realism or delusion , a dream ? Whatever it was, it took away for me from a serious, heart wrenching story and I was a little disappointed. I should have paid more attention to the description that mentions “fabulist imagery” or by the cover . For me it would have been a more powerful story without it . Even with that reservation, I have to say this is a beautifully written story filled with terrific descriptive writing of the places in Argentina, Brazil and the streets and buildings of New York City and Rome, and a revealing story about this awful time in Argentina's history. I can't quite give it 4 stars but I will definitely watch for what Anca Szilagyi writes in the future.
I received an advanced copy of this book from Lanternfish Press through NetGalley.
February 7, 2018
On a summer's night in 1980, Tatiana "Pluta" Spektor walks away from her New York boarding school and hitches a ride to the city. The young teen is swallowed up by Brooklyn. Pluta wanders, a displaced shell, silent and sullen, forced to use a body she doesn't entirely understand to survive, until she learns to spread her literal and figurative wings.
Daughters of the Air is a coming-of-age tale set against memories of Argentina's Dirty War. From 1976 to 1983, over 30,000 Argentinians were "disappeared" in a campaign of terror that targeted ordinary citizens who were deemed a threat by the military dictatorship. Anca Szilagyi's gorgeous and elegiac debut is a fictional account of a family torn apart by that war, giving a face and the force of fury and despair to statistics that are hard to comprehend.
Pluta is an only child, raised in a middle-class neighborhood of Buenos Aires, daughter of Daniel, a beloved professor of sociology, and Isabel, a mother whose desire for a more genteel life leaves her cold and disaffected. When Pluta's father disappears one Sunday afternoon, Isabel maintains a veneer of normalcy until it becomes clear that she too may be at risk. She flees with Pluta, first to Brazil, then to New York, where her daughter's grandfather had attended boarding school. She drops Pluta off and settles herself into a small flat in the city, wandering, watching.
But this story is Pluta's. It is her search for meaning, for identity, for that elusive concept of 'home'. Szilyagi writes her with dignity and tenderness, and yet with a backbone of steel. A backbone that begins to morph into something altogether unexpected and fantastic; we crane our minds even as Pluta cranes her neck to see what is happening behind her.
The chapters alternate between the recent past—Pluta's formative years in Argentina and her escape after Daniel's disappearance—and the stark present of her homelessness and desperation in Brooklyn. Tension hums as Pluta encounters danger and the possibility of rescue. Woven into the narrative like shimmering threads are fabulist elements that lift this novel from grim to grace. The mystical serves to remind us of the power of the human spirit, they wrap themselves around Pluta and lift her up, reminding her of her own power and uniqueness.
There are sections in the latter third of the book that show both Pluta and Isabel in isolation; Isabel in Rome during a summer when she thinks Pluta is staying with a friend, and Pluta's own self-exile to Brooklyn before her mother learns she has disappeared. The sense of longing and loneliness of this mother and daughter is breathtaking.
As is this novel. Szilyagi shows us the cost of political repression—families broken, wounds that never heal, displacement and bewilderment, closed doors and so many unanswered questions. But Pluta's story is not without hope and redemption. In Szilagyi's confident hands, in her beautiful, lucid prose, it is a story you will not want to put down.
Daughters of the Air is a coming-of-age tale set against memories of Argentina's Dirty War. From 1976 to 1983, over 30,000 Argentinians were "disappeared" in a campaign of terror that targeted ordinary citizens who were deemed a threat by the military dictatorship. Anca Szilagyi's gorgeous and elegiac debut is a fictional account of a family torn apart by that war, giving a face and the force of fury and despair to statistics that are hard to comprehend.
Pluta is an only child, raised in a middle-class neighborhood of Buenos Aires, daughter of Daniel, a beloved professor of sociology, and Isabel, a mother whose desire for a more genteel life leaves her cold and disaffected. When Pluta's father disappears one Sunday afternoon, Isabel maintains a veneer of normalcy until it becomes clear that she too may be at risk. She flees with Pluta, first to Brazil, then to New York, where her daughter's grandfather had attended boarding school. She drops Pluta off and settles herself into a small flat in the city, wandering, watching.
But this story is Pluta's. It is her search for meaning, for identity, for that elusive concept of 'home'. Szilyagi writes her with dignity and tenderness, and yet with a backbone of steel. A backbone that begins to morph into something altogether unexpected and fantastic; we crane our minds even as Pluta cranes her neck to see what is happening behind her.
The chapters alternate between the recent past—Pluta's formative years in Argentina and her escape after Daniel's disappearance—and the stark present of her homelessness and desperation in Brooklyn. Tension hums as Pluta encounters danger and the possibility of rescue. Woven into the narrative like shimmering threads are fabulist elements that lift this novel from grim to grace. The mystical serves to remind us of the power of the human spirit, they wrap themselves around Pluta and lift her up, reminding her of her own power and uniqueness.
There are sections in the latter third of the book that show both Pluta and Isabel in isolation; Isabel in Rome during a summer when she thinks Pluta is staying with a friend, and Pluta's own self-exile to Brooklyn before her mother learns she has disappeared. The sense of longing and loneliness of this mother and daughter is breathtaking.
As is this novel. Szilyagi shows us the cost of political repression—families broken, wounds that never heal, displacement and bewilderment, closed doors and so many unanswered questions. But Pluta's story is not without hope and redemption. In Szilagyi's confident hands, in her beautiful, lucid prose, it is a story you will not want to put down.
December 7, 2017
Review soon.
August 9, 2017
Well, gosh! I wrote this novel and am pretty darn excited about it. Hope you are too.
October 9, 2017
This story took me completely by surprise. Publicly released descriptions do not prepare you for the grit and ache and struggle and longing that will fold over you as you read the words on the page. I love characters that make me feel something because those emotions are what I carry with me, what I return to as I experience my own life.
The story alternates between Argentina during the Dirty War in the late 1970s and Brooklyn, NY a few years later. The main character, who calls herself “Pluta”, is an awkward (but mostly happy) young girl – until her father disappears amidst political turmoil. She and her mother flee and find themselves in New York where her mother struggles to cope with the terrible turn of events. Pluta is sent to a boarding school where she runs away, desperate to spread her wings and fly. She finds herself alone on the streets of Brooklyn where she begins to evolve in more ways that one.
Szilagyi’s writing is so vivid that I felt I was in Argentina and Brooklyn (I have never been to either). She has this way of transporting you into the characters and their inhibited space while sparing you of any fluff. She is a smart writer, dropping you straight into the white hot truth of life. Reality becomes about “tumors or mutation or evolution”.
There is a couple of things about this novel that stand out to me:
1. Its an adult story (very adult – see #2) where the main character is a young girl. Typically, the age of the main character is one of a few factors that determine genre – young adult vs adult fiction – but this one is definitely not young adult.
In fact, there are a few Autumn reading challenges floating around YouTube** that require an adult novel with a young girl as the main character – this would be a great candidate.
2. There are some traumatic things that happen to Pluta (she is a lone teenager on the streets of Brooklyn, after all) but these events are relevant to the character and story. While I was shocked at the time, it was not for shock value and the story would be missing something without them.
3. The narrative of Pluta’s mother is undeniably human, and deals with motherhood and marriage themes that I think society often shies away from. She doesn’t directly articulate it, but the subtle sense of weight in her relationships was something I appreciated.
This book was a shining example of why I love getting advanced reader copies from publishers (thanks!). It stretches my reading boundaries and introduces me to new authors and styles, and… Y’all know how much I love a stunning debut novel. I have all the feels.
I hope you enjoy this gripping tale as much as I did. I’m looking forward to Szilagyi’s future work.
Happy reading!
-E
This review is cross listed on my blog: http://elizabethseditions.com/2017/10...
* Thanks to Lanternfish Press, NetGalley, and the author for the free copy in exchange for my honest review.
**Not sponsored, just tagged for fun
The story alternates between Argentina during the Dirty War in the late 1970s and Brooklyn, NY a few years later. The main character, who calls herself “Pluta”, is an awkward (but mostly happy) young girl – until her father disappears amidst political turmoil. She and her mother flee and find themselves in New York where her mother struggles to cope with the terrible turn of events. Pluta is sent to a boarding school where she runs away, desperate to spread her wings and fly. She finds herself alone on the streets of Brooklyn where she begins to evolve in more ways that one.
Szilagyi’s writing is so vivid that I felt I was in Argentina and Brooklyn (I have never been to either). She has this way of transporting you into the characters and their inhibited space while sparing you of any fluff. She is a smart writer, dropping you straight into the white hot truth of life. Reality becomes about “tumors or mutation or evolution”.
There is a couple of things about this novel that stand out to me:
1. Its an adult story (very adult – see #2) where the main character is a young girl. Typically, the age of the main character is one of a few factors that determine genre – young adult vs adult fiction – but this one is definitely not young adult.
In fact, there are a few Autumn reading challenges floating around YouTube** that require an adult novel with a young girl as the main character – this would be a great candidate.
2. There are some traumatic things that happen to Pluta (she is a lone teenager on the streets of Brooklyn, after all) but these events are relevant to the character and story. While I was shocked at the time, it was not for shock value and the story would be missing something without them.
3. The narrative of Pluta’s mother is undeniably human, and deals with motherhood and marriage themes that I think society often shies away from. She doesn’t directly articulate it, but the subtle sense of weight in her relationships was something I appreciated.
This book was a shining example of why I love getting advanced reader copies from publishers (thanks!). It stretches my reading boundaries and introduces me to new authors and styles, and… Y’all know how much I love a stunning debut novel. I have all the feels.
I hope you enjoy this gripping tale as much as I did. I’m looking forward to Szilagyi’s future work.
Happy reading!
-E
This review is cross listed on my blog: http://elizabethseditions.com/2017/10...
* Thanks to Lanternfish Press, NetGalley, and the author for the free copy in exchange for my honest review.
**Not sponsored, just tagged for fun
November 1, 2017
A gritty and poignant novel about the ways that past trauma trickles into the present and becomes a reverberating, haunting presence. I really liked Szilágyi’s evocative style and her beautiful way of describing Pluta and Isabel’s moral (as well as mortal) conflicts as they grapple with the loss of their former lives. The surrealist elements of the novel are really well written and add a whimsical, fairytale quality to the narrative. Even more, I liked the way that Daniel was not only a victim of a corrupt government, but also the embodiment of longed-for past, a fragmented memory that is more romantic when looked upon from a turbulent present.
I received an ARC of this novel from Netgalley for free in exchange for an honest review.
I received an ARC of this novel from Netgalley for free in exchange for an honest review.
December 24, 2017
Most Sunday mornings you can usual find me in bed flicking through blogs and tumbler looking for new books to read. And that was how I came across this one. The cover grabbed me as I was passing through. It seemed like such a strange image that I had to stop and find out what it was all about. Argentina is a country I know little about other than its location on a map. So I felt a slight intrigue to maybe learn something. Also I was curious about Pluta and what would happen to here once she become homeless would this all end in tragedy or could she maybe find a light at the end of the tunnel.
The story is told from Pluta's perspective which I felt add a lot to how I came to feel about this book. With out this the book would have felt a little empty to me. Through a mixture of her interactions with those around her and her internal thoughts I came to see what a wonderfully complex person she was. She is brave, passionate, scared, naïve and wise beyond her years. To some extend she show a chameleon like quality where ever the winds take her she melts in and finds ways to adapt to her new situations. Her life as I came to learn was not a particularly easy one. While I appreciate that some of this was from her own doing mostly down to her decision to run away from boarding school it makes it no less heart breaking.
Inside her there is something burning deep down. Not only for her need to escape but also in a need to explore and find a new world that she believes is out there. All the while taking us with her on this magical and surreal journey. The author draws you into to her bit by bit building up compassion for this person she has created. Both Pluta and her mother show a great deal of loneliness through out this book. While they both try to deal with it in there own ways. They share this connection of trying to fill a hole that can never be filled. The authors way of describing there thoughts and actions as a reaction to this crept of the page and into my mind. The feeling she evokes are very real and tangible and at times I could feel them welling up in me.
Szilagyi creates this dream like world in the telling of her story. This is not the dreams of a child though more a darker floating quality. You feel like your rubbing up against the real world slightly muffled and hazy. For me there where times it could be a mixture between a Tom waits song and that of the beat generation. It holds a bitter sweet view of the world where the focus is on the sort of people we would tend to walk past and not give a second look to. In a lot of ways this is a modern fairy tale like the original Grimm's story's. People will suffer and they will get hurt along the way. A lot of the people Pluta come into contact with have for one reason or another crashed down to rock bottom. They are the forgotten people of the world. Luck seems to have not been on there side and are just trying to make the best of the hand they have been dealt. What our heroine goes through to survive while on the streets is one I think a lot of people live as there everyday lives.
The story changes time period between her life in Argentina and her time spent on the streets. This allows a look at the differences between how a child sees the world and a young women trying to find her place in it. The earlier parts of the story deal with the disappearance of Pluta's father in Argentina's dirty war a topic I think a lot of people are still trying to come to terms with even today. If some one you cared deeply for just didn't come home one day how are you suppose to reconcile this. With no answers to this question you are only left with your own imagination to fill in the blanks. For most of us I would think you would go to the worst case scenario. You would end up on the phone to the police begging them for help. How ever in the time period this book is set this would not be a very wise thing to do. And how is she as a child suppose to pull all the parts together into something she can understand. The last element of this book is the magical realism I guess you would call it. For me it fits into the story so seamlessly. It lifts our heroin up to some other place not necessarily high just different.
This is a book that drew me in to its world. The author for me has brought to life something that will fascinate and hold on to you. It's a world of crooked and broken people all searching for something they just don't seem to be able to hold onto. All the elements in this book combine together to make something truly great for me. It is a book I will be adding to my forever books.
April 29, 2018
DNF @ 35%
Through the opening 35% of Daughters in the Air that I read, I kept hoping that I would be drawn in by something, anything really. So many reviewers have praised this novel, and yet I just couldn’t feel any real connection or compassion for any of the characters. That includes our lead teen who runs away.
Each chapter swaps between her in the current time, as she is running away, and her past time, when her father left and her relationship with her mother deteriorates. I can honestly say I don’t care the reason why the father was suddenly no longer able to return, why her mother was such a bitch or even why our lead gal was so naive to think she could just runaway with little to no resources and hope that people would help her out. It’s baffling to me in some ways that I didn’t care about our lead gal and her plight as it seems like all the right elements are there but the story and characters slogged along for me at a snail pace. Enough so that I fell asleep while trying to reading Daughters in the Air on more than one occasion.
Perhaps there is an amazing ending or story to be found here but I couldn’t get into it and can honestly say I’m okay never finding out.
For this and more of my reviews please visit my blog at: Epic Reading
Please note: I received an eARC of this book from the publisher via NetGalley. This is an honest and unbiased review.
Through the opening 35% of Daughters in the Air that I read, I kept hoping that I would be drawn in by something, anything really. So many reviewers have praised this novel, and yet I just couldn’t feel any real connection or compassion for any of the characters. That includes our lead teen who runs away.
Each chapter swaps between her in the current time, as she is running away, and her past time, when her father left and her relationship with her mother deteriorates. I can honestly say I don’t care the reason why the father was suddenly no longer able to return, why her mother was such a bitch or even why our lead gal was so naive to think she could just runaway with little to no resources and hope that people would help her out. It’s baffling to me in some ways that I didn’t care about our lead gal and her plight as it seems like all the right elements are there but the story and characters slogged along for me at a snail pace. Enough so that I fell asleep while trying to reading Daughters in the Air on more than one occasion.
Perhaps there is an amazing ending or story to be found here but I couldn’t get into it and can honestly say I’m okay never finding out.
For this and more of my reviews please visit my blog at: Epic Reading
Please note: I received an eARC of this book from the publisher via NetGalley. This is an honest and unbiased review.
June 6, 2018
This book perfectly combines elements of magical realism, teen angst, and the gritty beauty of 1980s Brooklyn. It tells the story of a young girl who runs away from her boarding school in the wake of her father's disappearance in Argentina's Dirty War. The protagonist grows, changes, and transforms as her world falls apart. The prose is tight and effective in providing authentic voices for the characters. I highly recommend this novel!
December 28, 2017
Wow. Heartbreaking, but with a very satisfying ending. Beginning with chapter 2, I was hooked.
May 8, 2018
This book was recommended to me by a friend of mine who knows the author. I really had no clue as to what this book was about, but I decided to buy a copy and dive in. Wow! I was pleasantly surprised by how amazing and powerful this book is. With a difficult subject matter (the political unrest in Argentina in the 1970's), this is a tale of loss, but also of redemption. It reminded me of Isabel Allende's The House of The Spirits. It is both brutal, and beautiful.
What I Liked:
Setting:
The book is set in several different places and time periods: Argentina and Brazil in 1978, and New York City and Rome in 1980. Each place comes alive with vivid descriptions.
In Buenos Aires, the reader gets a glimpse of a city in the throes of a repressive regime. People are on edge as some citizens who are associated with protests disappear. When people try to search for their loved ones, they are met with indifference, and, if they persist, intimidation. The author uses small details such as Pluta falling into mud and ruining her dress as a portent of bad things to come.
New York seemed particularly gritty and menacing in the book. In the 1970's and 1980's, New York was rife with crime. Considering the oppressive and dangerous country where they had only recently lived, I was more fearful for Pluta in the Big Apple! And with good reason.
Characters:
Pluta is a young teen who feels adrift at a boarding school in Connecticut. Originally from Argentina, she doesn't understand her father's sudden disappearance, or her mother's abandonment. Although she makes many terrible mistakes, I really liked Pluta's tenacity, and spirit. She refuses to be a victim. But she also doesn't let others help her when she clearly needs it. But I think, given her young age, that is understandable.
Isabel is Pluta's mother, and will not earn any awards for parenting. She is grieving the loss of her husband, but refuses to acknowledge to her daughter that he is probably dead. This leaves her Pluta feeling confused and abandoned. While I wanted to hate Isabel for her treatment of Pluta, I also could see how confused and abandoned she, herself, felt. Isabel had been brought up to believe that she would be taken care of by a husband. When Daniel is abruptly out of the picture, she feels betrayed, even if it isn't his fault. She is also a daughter of the air, adrift in her newfound freedom.
Story:
The story jumps between what happened when Daniel disappears in 1978, to two years later. Most of what happens is seen through the eyes of Pluta as she tries to make sense of the unthinkable. Her descent into Hell is frightening. Despite the protagonist being in her early teens, THIS IS NOT A YA BOOK! The violence that Pluta deals with as a runaway in New York is brutal, as is her methods of survival.
The book dips a toe into magical realism with the theme of wings (flying, freedom, metamorphosis). At first I had a "What the hell?" reaction to this. But, I later found it to be a powerful allegory to moving from the dependence of childhood to the self-reliance of adulthood. There are also references to spirits that may, or may not, be around to guide Pluta. I found these elements to be wonderful (and a bit trippy!)
This was a challenging book due to its gritty realism coupled with its hints at the magical. But it was ultimately a very rewarding reading experience.
What I Liked:
Setting:
The book is set in several different places and time periods: Argentina and Brazil in 1978, and New York City and Rome in 1980. Each place comes alive with vivid descriptions.
In Buenos Aires, the reader gets a glimpse of a city in the throes of a repressive regime. People are on edge as some citizens who are associated with protests disappear. When people try to search for their loved ones, they are met with indifference, and, if they persist, intimidation. The author uses small details such as Pluta falling into mud and ruining her dress as a portent of bad things to come.
New York seemed particularly gritty and menacing in the book. In the 1970's and 1980's, New York was rife with crime. Considering the oppressive and dangerous country where they had only recently lived, I was more fearful for Pluta in the Big Apple! And with good reason.
Characters:
Pluta is a young teen who feels adrift at a boarding school in Connecticut. Originally from Argentina, she doesn't understand her father's sudden disappearance, or her mother's abandonment. Although she makes many terrible mistakes, I really liked Pluta's tenacity, and spirit. She refuses to be a victim. But she also doesn't let others help her when she clearly needs it. But I think, given her young age, that is understandable.
Isabel is Pluta's mother, and will not earn any awards for parenting. She is grieving the loss of her husband, but refuses to acknowledge to her daughter that he is probably dead. This leaves her Pluta feeling confused and abandoned. While I wanted to hate Isabel for her treatment of Pluta, I also could see how confused and abandoned she, herself, felt. Isabel had been brought up to believe that she would be taken care of by a husband. When Daniel is abruptly out of the picture, she feels betrayed, even if it isn't his fault. She is also a daughter of the air, adrift in her newfound freedom.
Story:
The story jumps between what happened when Daniel disappears in 1978, to two years later. Most of what happens is seen through the eyes of Pluta as she tries to make sense of the unthinkable. Her descent into Hell is frightening. Despite the protagonist being in her early teens, THIS IS NOT A YA BOOK! The violence that Pluta deals with as a runaway in New York is brutal, as is her methods of survival.
The book dips a toe into magical realism with the theme of wings (flying, freedom, metamorphosis). At first I had a "What the hell?" reaction to this. But, I later found it to be a powerful allegory to moving from the dependence of childhood to the self-reliance of adulthood. There are also references to spirits that may, or may not, be around to guide Pluta. I found these elements to be wonderful (and a bit trippy!)
This was a challenging book due to its gritty realism coupled with its hints at the magical. But it was ultimately a very rewarding reading experience.
February 6, 2018
If Anca Szilágyi’s Daughters of the Air is a fairy tale, it is a real one of the old school, forged in fire and annealed in blood. If it is a work of realism, it reveals how reality fractures in the face of falsehood — family secrets no less than state ones.
The novel follows the fortunes of Tatiana “Pluta” Spektor, a young girl whose father went missing during Argentina’s Dirty War. Pluta, a runaway lost in New York City, reminded me of Clarice Lispector’s Macabéa, lost in Rio de Janeiro. And the way the author employs a fabulism bordering on the grotesque — as per Wolfgang Kayser’s view that “the grotesque is the expression of the estranged or alienated world” — reminded me of some of the stranger offerings of Nikolai Gogol.
Needless to say, I loved this debut.
The novel follows the fortunes of Tatiana “Pluta” Spektor, a young girl whose father went missing during Argentina’s Dirty War. Pluta, a runaway lost in New York City, reminded me of Clarice Lispector’s Macabéa, lost in Rio de Janeiro. And the way the author employs a fabulism bordering on the grotesque — as per Wolfgang Kayser’s view that “the grotesque is the expression of the estranged or alienated world” — reminded me of some of the stranger offerings of Nikolai Gogol.
Needless to say, I loved this debut.
January 4, 2018
Szilagyi has written a beautiful first novel. The story has an unexpected twist that takes it into territory that is both surprising and enchanting. With scenes set in Buenos Aires, New York, Manaus and Rome, it is a globe-trotting story set in a more innocent 1980s and a grittier world. It was a time when getting lost was still possible. This was a great book to start the year with!
January 19, 2018
I was captivated by this dreamy, heartbreaking book. Magical realism is my favorite genre!
August 19, 2018
***Review for NETGALLEY***
When I started Daughters in the Air, I thought I would be reading about Argentina's war in the 70's-80's. I did learn a lot about the events that took place during that time of turmoil in Argentina. These are events that many people do not know about, unless you know someone from that region or lived there. These are events that I've only recently learned about through online media, about the Ladies in the White Hats.
This book does cover that, but it covers it in the experience of one family, how the father/husband disappears when he goes to work one Sunday and to be never heard from again. How the two remaining members of that family are lost.
Isabel the mother, disconnect from her only child. Looking in from the outside, we feel that she handles Pluta and the whole situation wrong. She is cold and in no emotionally connected to her daughter, but she try to protect from the fact that her father is missing. She handles the situation the only way she knows how. She lies and runs from the situation.
Pluta, is lost, her mother thinks that just because she is a child, she is stupid. That she can't put two and two together to realize something bad has happened to her father. That he hasn't gone away on business, but that he has disappeared. She knows her mother really doesn't like her as well, because she isn't pretty enough or she doesn't fit the mold that Isabel wants her too. She becomes totally lost when her mother ships her off to boarding school thinking it will make everything more bearable.
My heart breaks for Pluta, she goes into a tailspin when her mother leaves her. She has always felt awkward and different. She now in a different country and is left to figure things out on her own. She does what her mother does and flees. Runs into the city, New York, and the situations she finds herself in are so painful and at first she's indifferent to these situations. As they get worse, she realizes that this is not good for her and she becomes paranoid, but she still knows that she cannot call her mother. Her mother would just make it worse.
This book is about the effects of war and losing a loved one, especially when that loved one is the only person who loved you no matter how different you are. Pluta lost her anchor and so did her mother and they are both lost little girls.
I learned about loss and about a war no one really knows about.
When I started Daughters in the Air, I thought I would be reading about Argentina's war in the 70's-80's. I did learn a lot about the events that took place during that time of turmoil in Argentina. These are events that many people do not know about, unless you know someone from that region or lived there. These are events that I've only recently learned about through online media, about the Ladies in the White Hats.
This book does cover that, but it covers it in the experience of one family, how the father/husband disappears when he goes to work one Sunday and to be never heard from again. How the two remaining members of that family are lost.
Isabel the mother, disconnect from her only child. Looking in from the outside, we feel that she handles Pluta and the whole situation wrong. She is cold and in no emotionally connected to her daughter, but she try to protect from the fact that her father is missing. She handles the situation the only way she knows how. She lies and runs from the situation.
Pluta, is lost, her mother thinks that just because she is a child, she is stupid. That she can't put two and two together to realize something bad has happened to her father. That he hasn't gone away on business, but that he has disappeared. She knows her mother really doesn't like her as well, because she isn't pretty enough or she doesn't fit the mold that Isabel wants her too. She becomes totally lost when her mother ships her off to boarding school thinking it will make everything more bearable.
My heart breaks for Pluta, she goes into a tailspin when her mother leaves her. She has always felt awkward and different. She now in a different country and is left to figure things out on her own. She does what her mother does and flees. Runs into the city, New York, and the situations she finds herself in are so painful and at first she's indifferent to these situations. As they get worse, she realizes that this is not good for her and she becomes paranoid, but she still knows that she cannot call her mother. Her mother would just make it worse.
This book is about the effects of war and losing a loved one, especially when that loved one is the only person who loved you no matter how different you are. Pluta lost her anchor and so did her mother and they are both lost little girls.
I learned about loss and about a war no one really knows about.
June 23, 2019
"Daughters of the Air" is a compelling and disturbing story. It dives into a girl's psyche after her father disappears from their life in Buenos Aires, Argentina during the political upheaval in the late 70s. Her mother receives a package at the door, we assume it is the father's hand or both hands, there is a wedding ring. She buries the box and does not tell her daughter anything, probably because she won't admit it to herself. She had been the one to insist on staying when he considered leaving the country. The wife had been in denial that anything bad could happen to them. Even after he disappears she seems to believe he did something wrong.
Formally named Tatiana, the main character prefers to go by Pluta and is 14 years old. The mother-daughter relationship is not good, and never has been, Pluta was close to her father. The mother takes her to visit her sister living in Brazil, whom their family had not visited with before. The sister, Lolo, disappointed her upper class parents by marrying a much older man and when he died she did not return home. For me, she is the most interesting character in the book. She contacts the spirt of her dead husband for answers, I wanted to know more about her.
Aunt Lolo is warmer than the mother and wants to share the truth with Pluta but does not feel it is her place. Things go downhill when her mother sends Pluta to the school her aunt's dead husband went to as a boy in Connecticut. At school she does not fit in, characterized as a misfit, she does have one other 'misfit' friend she spends a summer with. In the opening chapter Pluto is running away from school, hitchhiking her way to NYC in 1980. A man named Bobby picks her up and she winds up in Brooklyn.
On arriving in Brooklyn, the first thing she wants, after he buys her dinner, is a tattoo of wings on her back. She's not able to care for herself so they develop lumps, which contort in her mind into wings. Bobby tells her to leave after two nights and she sleeps in a park under cardboard boxes. She is raped by a man who brings her to his dilapidated house assuming she is a prostitute. After getting money from him and watching the prostitutes in the park she starts making money this way. She is raped again and fights back killing the man by fire, she spirals out of control, the first man who drove her to Brooklyn finds her in this altered state, she dives into polluted water in the Gowanus Canal, believing she can fly. He takes her to a hospital, finds her passport to help her fill out the paperwork, then contacts the mother. By this time the school has notified the mother and she hired a private detective who has had no success finding her.
I feel for this girl, for the lack of communication, for her grief missing her father and not knowing, for having no one to reach out to, and for her confusion about what sex is even is while she uses it to survive. Anca L. Szilagyi's writing is riveting and painful. Pluta portrays raw trauma.
The artwork on the cover is beautiful, the head has a large bird beak, which is suiting for the girl in the book who wants to change species, to fly, but is stuck in the mire of grief. This book relays one story out of thousands, and it is written so well it is excruciating to read. In the epilogue set in 1984 the mother and daughter are together again, the mother has made some changes to be softer with her daughter, and the girl is quiet. It is impossible to know if they will ever heal.
Formally named Tatiana, the main character prefers to go by Pluta and is 14 years old. The mother-daughter relationship is not good, and never has been, Pluta was close to her father. The mother takes her to visit her sister living in Brazil, whom their family had not visited with before. The sister, Lolo, disappointed her upper class parents by marrying a much older man and when he died she did not return home. For me, she is the most interesting character in the book. She contacts the spirt of her dead husband for answers, I wanted to know more about her.
Aunt Lolo is warmer than the mother and wants to share the truth with Pluta but does not feel it is her place. Things go downhill when her mother sends Pluta to the school her aunt's dead husband went to as a boy in Connecticut. At school she does not fit in, characterized as a misfit, she does have one other 'misfit' friend she spends a summer with. In the opening chapter Pluto is running away from school, hitchhiking her way to NYC in 1980. A man named Bobby picks her up and she winds up in Brooklyn.
On arriving in Brooklyn, the first thing she wants, after he buys her dinner, is a tattoo of wings on her back. She's not able to care for herself so they develop lumps, which contort in her mind into wings. Bobby tells her to leave after two nights and she sleeps in a park under cardboard boxes. She is raped by a man who brings her to his dilapidated house assuming she is a prostitute. After getting money from him and watching the prostitutes in the park she starts making money this way. She is raped again and fights back killing the man by fire, she spirals out of control, the first man who drove her to Brooklyn finds her in this altered state, she dives into polluted water in the Gowanus Canal, believing she can fly. He takes her to a hospital, finds her passport to help her fill out the paperwork, then contacts the mother. By this time the school has notified the mother and she hired a private detective who has had no success finding her.
I feel for this girl, for the lack of communication, for her grief missing her father and not knowing, for having no one to reach out to, and for her confusion about what sex is even is while she uses it to survive. Anca L. Szilagyi's writing is riveting and painful. Pluta portrays raw trauma.
The artwork on the cover is beautiful, the head has a large bird beak, which is suiting for the girl in the book who wants to change species, to fly, but is stuck in the mire of grief. This book relays one story out of thousands, and it is written so well it is excruciating to read. In the epilogue set in 1984 the mother and daughter are together again, the mother has made some changes to be softer with her daughter, and the girl is quiet. It is impossible to know if they will ever heal.
Read
April 8, 2018This story, set in the late 1970s-early 80s, is a pleasure to read, full of sensory detail. The settings are vivid. The characters are fully rendered and believable. Our hero, the impulsive, enigmatic Pluta, realizes her abducted father, a victim of the Argentinian government, will never return to his family. She escapes from the Connecticut boarding school to which her mother has sent her and flees to New York to make her own way. She quickly discovers that the streets are a bad place for a fourteen-year-old. Plus, she sees apparitions and meets people who may be more than what they seem. And her own body begins to change in an unexpected way....
If you like The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time or the movies Pan's Labyrinth or Birdman, I think you will enjoy this. Also recommended for fans of Chekhov, fairy tales, literary fiction, or magical realism.
If you like The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time or the movies Pan's Labyrinth or Birdman, I think you will enjoy this. Also recommended for fans of Chekhov, fairy tales, literary fiction, or magical realism.
November 2, 2017
I was fortunate to read DAUGHTERS OF THE AIR in manuscript format, and found myself thinking about it for a long time afterward. Whenever I read anything by Anca Szilagyi's, I know I'll be encountering something entirely original (though if I was to think of another author akin, I'd have to compare Szilagyi to Angela Carter because of their fabulist tendencies). DAUGHTERS OF THE AIR is Szilagyi at the height of her talents, with each evocative word and image oh-so-carefully parsed and considered. Beautiful and haunting and just the right amount of disturbing.
October 15, 2018
Daughters of the Air held my attention for many reasons. It is one of those books that one sinks into, drinking multiple cups of tea, sitting by a window, basking in the beautiful language and steady pacing. I spent all of a Sunday, luxuriating in the story, rooting for Pluta through her many perils. This novel is also one of impact and education as we are led into a fictional family's devastation at the hands of the Argentinian dictatorship that took place (1976-1981); with that said, the novel never feels didactic and never reads as non-fiction. This is a tale--one with gritty fabulist elements.
February 18, 2025
Szilagyi's magical realist novel about a young girl from Buenos Aires, Argentina coming to terms with loss and survival in Brooklyn really struck me as something unique and important. The language and imagery are concise and neat, I didn't find myself racing to the bottom of the page or paragraph to reach the punchline of the passage, the imagery is visceral and beautiful to read. I won't go into too much of the specifics of the magical elements since I think they are important for the reader to discover on their own journey through the novel, but I think worked very well to describe her (potentially) stunted evolution.
I enjoyed the back and forth between past and present, the mother and daughter's perspectives. This book informed me about the Argentinian "Dirty War", where roughly 30,000 individuals believed to be political dissidents were abducted and (likely) killed and felt relevant in the current political climate (unfortunately).
New York also was a character in the book, while often grim due to the people Pluta encounters, still felt very present, and ultimately in the end, potentially hopeful. I liked the greasy spoon diners and the playground, and the grittiness of 80's NY.
I'd recommend this book to anyone that's a fan of magical realist lit. Pluta's journey was admittedly pretty brutal, but well worth the read and the imagery throughout was potent and memorable.
I enjoyed the back and forth between past and present, the mother and daughter's perspectives. This book informed me about the Argentinian "Dirty War", where roughly 30,000 individuals believed to be political dissidents were abducted and (likely) killed and felt relevant in the current political climate (unfortunately).
New York also was a character in the book, while often grim due to the people Pluta encounters, still felt very present, and ultimately in the end, potentially hopeful. I liked the greasy spoon diners and the playground, and the grittiness of 80's NY.
I'd recommend this book to anyone that's a fan of magical realist lit. Pluta's journey was admittedly pretty brutal, but well worth the read and the imagery throughout was potent and memorable.
January 8, 2019
Beautifully written and artfully walks the line of subtle magical realism and trauma/mental health.
June 20, 2019
An unsettling and moving modern fairy tale. I was riveted.
February 8, 2018
Daughters of the Air is a coming of age story, set against the backdrop of Argentina’s Dirty War, and distilled (in prose chock-full of unexpected delights) within two critical moments in the life of Tatiana ‘Pluta’ Spektor. The first revolves around the disappearance of her academic father in Buenos Aires (the presumed victim of a political purge), the events leading up to it, and its fallout. The year is 1978 and Pluta is twelve. The second takes place in New York, where mother and daughter have relocated to escape the reign of terror that has already claimed the girl’s father. It’s now 1980, and Pluta is a fourteen year old runaway, an escapee from the boarding school she has been consigned to while her mother vacations in Rome, driven by the feeling that the real story behind her family’s disintegration has been hidden from her, and she has to ‘be alone… to uncover it.’ For Pluta, the truth is ‘a mass of black, writhing snakes—a massive Gorgon’s head,’ hidden under a sheet that those around her are continuously tidying, ‘smoothing it down, stretching it taut over churning lumps.’ But what she wants—more than anything—is simply to get ‘away,’ to be someplace else.
These competing impulses, the quest for the truth and the desire to get away (which can be read as a truth avoidance reflex and a path to discovery, both) drive the narrative as she attempts to navigate the challenges of life on the street.
If her father’s disappearance represents the locus of her interior life, the motif of presence through absence expresses itself in other ways as well, and Szilagyi is at her best when mining this terrain.
Pluta’s introduction to life on the street comes via an aging man who assumes her to be a prostitute—looking for tricks. They meet at a playground (one frequented by prostitutes) at the edge of an industrial neighborhood in Brooklyn, where the man comes to feed pigeons. He strikes up a conversation that seems—in its meandering nonchalance— innocent enough. When he hears her stomach growl and realizes she’s hungry, he invites her over to his place for snacks, a dilapidated shack in a warehouse district, not far from the park. The visit takes an unanticipated turn when he pulls out his wallet, withdraws fifty dollars in tens, and places it on the table next to her. But it isn’t until he climbs on top of her and pins her prone to his living room couch that she understands what the money is for and what he expects in return. Pluta’s reaction is, on the surface, light on emotion. What we get is a series of actions, most of them discreet. Pluta scanning the shack, assessing it through the prism of this unexpected development, the possibility of escape, the proximity of help (expressed with minimalist poignancy in the sound of a car she can’t gauge the distance of), the prospects of negotiating her way out of it. She bolts for the door at first opportunity, but only after the man has satisfied himself. In the end, Szilagyi’s rendering of this scene, with its ostensible lack of interiority at a point that would seem to beg for it, casts the emotions that Pluta is forced to subordinate to the exigencies of survival into sharp relief—in a way and with a palpability that a more straightforward rendering might not. Call it a stealth interiority, one that makes its presence felt via the body more than the mind, but is no less forceful in doing so, because the scene is heartbreaking.
Much has been made of the story’s fabulist imagery. And while the author has not shied away from that association, for me, the relationship between the book’s overarching narrative and its fabulist element came across as a guarded flirtation, rather than an unbridled embrace. Granted, that may reflect my own biases more than those of the author, but Szilagyi has shrouded the fantastical in ambiguity, and there's just enough of it to give those who prefer their fiction to conform to the contours of their lived experience the hermeneutic wiggle-room they covet. I can read it either way and remain comfortably enthralled.
The ending is superb; it opens as many doors as it closes, which makes it the kind of book that really stays with you.
July 18, 2020
Spanning continents, eras and perspectives, Daughters of the Air is a lyric exploration of the legacies of violence in the wake of Argentina's dirty war of the 70s. Elements of magical realism abound, but in truth, their effects feel absolutely apropos in the mind, body and spirit of the protagonist Pluta, who loses her father and later, her sense of selfhood in diaspora. As stark as that sounds, Szilagyi's writing is lush, whether invoking an opera hall deep in the jungles of Brazil, the shimmer of possibility within a girl's imagination, or the depths of the Gowanus canal in Brooklyn. Beautiful.
January 15, 2020
Anca is a writer of fiction but her book touches upon themes I struggle with: international politics, the father daughter relationship, family secrets, and shifting between different time/location periods. Anca's story gives a personal face to the 30,000 people who "disappeared" during Argentina's Dirty War (1976 - 1983). In Buenos Aires, a young girl is never told what happened to her father who suddenly disappears, partly because her mother doesn't understand herself what happened. The consequence of this secret is both mother and daughter running away. First both of them running away to Brazil to stay with a relative who believes in speaking with the spirits. Then running away outside Latin America: the mother to Rome and the daughter to Brooklyn. A good story resonates with the reader. This book resonates with me as I work on my story about a father who keeps secrets, a mother who struggles to understand these secrets, and a daughter who uncovers the secrets. Anca's beautiful writing and touching details remind me the telling of the story is just as important as the story itself. Each person has their own version of the story, just as valid as the others but not the same. No one knows what the true story is but in the end, what matters is what we make of the story that is revealed to us. Even secrets eventually reveal themselves to the children, in one way or another.
July 12, 2020
Anca Szilagyi is an amazing writer. She treads the junctions where magical realism, the occult, fantastic beasts, and coming of age intersect with human emotions of grief and loss. At first I thought this was going to be about Pluta (Tatiana), a young woman about 14 years old but the author also explores the mother's emotional life as they both struggle in the years surrounding the disappearance of the husband/father in Argentina. I was thoroughly engaged in this deep dive into a search for the truth of love and human connection.
February 20, 2018
This book is remarkable and I am struggling to give it the review it deserves.
May 9, 2020
I suppose this is my last book of 2018 - and it's a worthy book to finish off what has been a great year of reading for me. I was immediately pulled into the story - even though it started off relatively innocently - and was unprepared for the various (shocking/fantastical/false(?)) turns it proceeded to take. I found the magical element to be perfectly melded to the gritty reality. Motifs were developed with subtlety; the plot crafted with great skill. The ending was conclusive (and very moving), but at the same time the author left several things for the reader to puzzle over. This is apt, because it is an unanswered question that explains the actions of the central character, Pluta.
Brings to mind a film I love - Guillermo del Toro's 'Pan's Labyrinth'.
Brings to mind a film I love - Guillermo del Toro's 'Pan's Labyrinth'.
April 6, 2018
I actually couldn't finish this book...I really wanted to like it. I love Argentina it's my second country. But I just couldn't get into this story. I think the author wanted us to feel the confusion of Pluta, but I needed a little bit more to go off of.
December 5, 2017
Thank you to NetGalley and Lanternfish Press for the ARC of this book in exchange for a honest review.
Anca Szilágyi is not just an author; she’s a poet, and this is not just a book but rather a piece of art. Set against Argentina’s “Dirty War” and the years proceeding it, this book describes the emotional and sometimes physical aftermath of a father gone missing. For choosing such a gritty and dark background to set this book Szilágyi paints a very vivid world. There were pages in which I could smell the air in Buenos Aires or taste the musky water of the canal in Gowanus. That salvages much of the book for me because towards the end there I was not quite sure what was happening. I believe (because I’m still not sure) the main character suffered a mental breakdown but for a few chapters it’s not fully clear if this book is fiction or science fiction/fantasy.
Also, there is no real resolution at the end of the book. You do get some closure on events that took place in the book early on but on the very last page of the book I felt like there was another story beginning.
Anca Szilágyi is not just an author; she’s a poet, and this is not just a book but rather a piece of art. Set against Argentina’s “Dirty War” and the years proceeding it, this book describes the emotional and sometimes physical aftermath of a father gone missing. For choosing such a gritty and dark background to set this book Szilágyi paints a very vivid world. There were pages in which I could smell the air in Buenos Aires or taste the musky water of the canal in Gowanus. That salvages much of the book for me because towards the end there I was not quite sure what was happening. I believe (because I’m still not sure) the main character suffered a mental breakdown but for a few chapters it’s not fully clear if this book is fiction or science fiction/fantasy.
Also, there is no real resolution at the end of the book. You do get some closure on events that took place in the book early on but on the very last page of the book I felt like there was another story beginning.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 59 reviews