The House of Discarded Dreams

by Ekaterina Sedia

Trying to escape her embarrassing immigrant mother, Vimbai moves into a dilapidated house in the dunes... and discovers that one of her new roommates has a pocket universe instead of hair, there's a psychic energy baby living in the telephone wires, and her dead Zimbabwean grandmother is doing dishes in the kitchen. When the house gets lost at sea and creatures of African urban legends all but take it over, Vimbai turns to horseshoe crabs in the ocean to ask for their help in getting home to New Jersey.

Genres: Fantasy, Fiction, Magical Realism, Science Fiction, Urban Fantasy, Science Fiction Fantasy, Speculative Fiction

320 pages, Paperback

First published November 16, 2010

About the author

Ekaterina Sedia is also credited as E. Sedia.

Reviews

[Angelica · Rating 4 out of 5]

THE HOUSE OF DISCARDED DREAMS, BY EKATERINA SEDIA

This one was recommended to me by a friend who is very into Magical Realism. I'm not sure what that means, to be honest, but I guess it would be something like Urban Fantasy with a blasé outlook. Weird shit happens and everybody is really cool about it.

Synopsis: Vimbai is the American daughter of Zimbabwean immigrants. She moves to a house in the dunes, trying to escape her mother, and ends up in a weird universe in the middle of the ocean, along with the ghost of her grandmother, a psychic energy baby, a best friend who has a pack of dog-like creatures, a boy whose hair is an entrance to an alien dimension and her own army of horseshoe crabs.

Overall enjoyment: It was weird, but I liked it. It took a while for the story to get started, it only really gets going on the second half of the book. The first half is more background information and kind of a philosophical trip into weirdness. Still, I am quite fond of philosophical trips into weirdness, so it was fine by me.

Plot: Like I said, it takes a while to get started. But I think she did it so the weirdness would creep up on you and you would be almost expecting it, instead of surprised by it.

Characters: I thought they were quite interesting. Vimbai is clearly the center of the narrative, so she's the most well-developed, but all the others still get their share of depth.

World/setting: It was really interesting, and quite fresh. The mythical background she uses for this is based on African folktales, and I'm sadly very ignorant on those (although I'm trying to rectify this). There are also many elements she made up herself and they blend in beautifully with the atmosphere.

Writing style: It was, maybe, too blasé for me. She's so commonplace and unimpressed by all the magic going on in the story. Maybe that was the effect she was going for, but I, personally, would have preferred a bit more wonder... Then again, it's just my personal preference.

Representation: The only white character is Fisk, and he's not even fully human. Vimbai and Maya are both black and queer.

Political correctness: The entire story is a magical metaphor for black and white conflict. Both in Africa, with Imperialism, and in America, with prejudice and racism. There is also some discussion of queerness, with Vimbai being attracted to girls but choking her own sexuality down so firmly that she herself sometimes wonders if she would also be attracted to boys if she ever tried to find out.

This book would be a really nice one to read during a lazy, rainy afternoon. It has very interesting and dense content presented in a beautiful and easy to consume package.

Up next: Deeper Than the Dead, by Tami Hoag

[Althea Ann · Rating 3 out of 5]

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 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.

[John · Rating 4 out of 5]

In some ways, more of a 4.5. Very well written, with a combination of whimsy and existential perturbation. The main character felt rather passive at times, and there is so much oddness thrown at you that it is hard to absorb it all. It is definitely a book that you sit and think about afterwards. Longer review to come!

Myself and a few other bloggers have been holding a Blog Carnival for the book. You can find a roundup of links at Paul Jessup's site: http://pauljessup.com/2011/05/09/hous... . I have several posts about the novel at my own site: www.eruditeogre.blogspot.com.

[Johanna Käck · Rating 3 out of 5]

"But why?" Vimbai whispered, overwhelmed with the weight of accumulated disbelief. "What is happening to us?"
"Who knows?" Maya shrugged. "Who cares? Enjoy it while you can, why don't you? There will be tons of boring shit in your life, okay? I promise."
"Okay," Vimbai sighed and followed along the path.

And that perfectly summarizes the experience of reading this book. Now I need to go find something plot-driven.

[Alan · Rating 2 out of 5]

What cruelty was this, when even our dreams and wish fulfillments offered not comfort but relived heartbreak?
—p.167

I might as well get the bad news out of the way first: The House of Discarded Dreams was the first book I've read by Ekaterina Sedia to leave me cold.

The good news is that it wasn't the writing; Sedia's prose remains as quirky and evocative as it's ever been (though she did use "circumvent" instead of "circumnavigate"—and "avoid" would have been better than either—on p.128).

Nor is this a reflection on any of Sedia's other work—her subsequent novel Heart of Iron (2011), for example, was great. This one just wasn't as immersive for me as The Secret History of Moscow or the amazing The Alchemy of Stone.

Possibly this is because The House of Discarded Dreams seems too much like the recounting of someone else's dream, where events move quickly—too quickly—into the surreal and disconnected. Even before the House heads out to sea, its inhabitants have injected a great deal of strangeness into Vimbai's life. Jonathan Carroll has managed this sort of abrupt transition from the mundane, but even he can't do it all the time.

I'm really not sure about Sedia's protagonist, either. Vimbai is an African-American; her parents are immigrants from Zimbabwe who live in New Jersey. Sedia is an immigrant to New Jersey herself, but from Russia—she is perhaps not literally Caucasian, but pretty close. Now, it's not that I think authors should never look to other cultures for inspiration, nor that Sedia did so very badly here—The House of Discarded Dreams did not strike me as an act of ham-handed cultural imperialism. But at times, the disparity between author and subject made this book seem to me more like an exercise in ethnography than a novel.

I was, however, struck powerfully by Vimbai's observation,

{...}how happy would her mother be to visit the house—the only country in the world where not a single pebble was named after a white guy.
—p.129

And by these as well...

"I don't owe it to anyone to do only what's healthy for me. Not even to myself."
—Maya, p.168

Maybe this is why her mother got so angry—maybe it was because they were too good as parents, they provided too well, spoiled her too much. They made it too easy for her, and thus failed to raise a child they could relate to.
—p.263

So, in sum, while I did not quite enjoy The House of Discarded Dreams as much as Ekaterina Sedia's other work, I did still find much to like within its covers, and still eagerly await the next book of hers that falls into my hands.

[Alytha · Rating 3 out of 5]

I would like to give this one 3.5 stars, but I can't...

It's pretty good, and has some really insane ideas. I like books that just grab an insane idea and run with it. This one has a couple: a guy with a small universe instead of hair, a floating house that's much bigger on the inside, a ghost baby with too many arms and legs, more ghosts...

However, there's also some problems. I'm always a bit weary if an author writes something that is completely out of their culture. It actually wet quite well for Catherynne Valente's Deathless, but it's something I always have doubt about. It's something you don't really have the "right" to do and to appropriate somebody else's culture and beliefs. That might not be the most fitting word to describe what I mean, but it's the only one I got. I wouldn't want a foreigner to write about what it's like to be a Luxembourger, and we're quite straightforward people. If your people, however, have a background on a different continent, and a troubled history, how much into that can an outsider get?
Here, we have a writer with Russian roots trying to slip into the shoes of a daughter of African parents, and I was never quite sure how "real" she was.

I would also have liked to get more explanations and background on Felix. He's a bit of a deus ex machina character, as he doesn't really do much more than literally pulling solutions out of his hair. He could have done with a bit more personality.

Although I liked the insane ideas, I always had the feeling that the story wasn't there just for its own sake, but that there was always a load of symbolism and "important human and ecological messages stuff" lurking beneath the surface. Maybe it has a bit too much pretense at being "real serious literature" instead of just wanting to tell a good story about three young people trying to find their way in the world. It's a bit heavyhanded.

All the whining done, it's actually pretty good.

[Alice · Rating 4 out of 5]

What a very odd book. Not that that's a bad thing, mind you; far too many books about dreams wallow in mundanity for far too much of the narrative. This book picks up its dreamlike state pretty damn fast, and the weirdness only grows thicker with each page.

Let's see if I can capture how odd this book is. The book is about Vimbai, who is first-generation American of Zimbabwean parents (I think). She moves into a house on the shore. One of her roommates has a pocket universe for hair. They're soon joined by Peb (short for Psychic Energy Baby), who was rescued from the phone lines, a trio of half-fox half-possum creatures, and the ghost of Vimbai's grandmother. And then the house floats off into the ocean, and, when they run low on coffee and beer, Vimbai asks the horseshoe crabs who live under the house to tow them home.

There were a lot of interesting perspectives from Vimbai that made me feel she was a very strong character, and Sedia put a lot of thought into portraying her perspective. There are also a lot of interesting African urban legends told throughout the narrative, and the narrative, itself, is quite interesting. There were times when I thought I was reading an easier-to-follow House of Leaves.

But, while I found the ending satisfying, and the overall read to be a good one, it did seem to stretch the weirdness a little TOO far. The characters seemed to accept things that would've had me babbling to myself for a few hours, and there were some odd leaps of logic. I would recommend this book, though, especially to those who like odd books. I would warn you, though: I had SUCH messed-up dreams while I was reading this book.

[Beth · Rating 5 out of 5]

What a surprising book! Sedia uses an unexpected combination of themes and mythologies to create a world within our mundane, twenty-first-century world--the world of the house. And this Russian-born writer makes central to the story two women, a black woman with African immigrant parents and a U.S-born black woman, who forge a friendship from sharing dreams, fears, and their experiences as women of color in America. I picked this book up because I was fascinated by the mention on the back of the character with a "pocket universe" for hair. Felix is certainly a fascinating character, but he's also on the margins. This is a sophisticatedly feminist book, an original, creative, nearly poetic work of fantasy. Highly recommended.

[Michael · Rating 4 out of 5]

THODD is one of those books that starts off in one particular direction and after about 30 pages takes a drastic 90-degree turn, ventures off in a different, completely weird direction, and never really comes back. It struck me that none of the main characters ever really reacted to the strangeness around them. They must be pretty resilient people, or maybe just used to that kind of thing (phantom limbs, cranial black holes and talking catfish). I feel like it all gelled well enough, though. I've read three novels by Sedia and none of them are the least bit similiar. This bodes well for her future.

[Jaime M · Rating 5 out of 5]

I can't say enough about this book! I admire the storytelling and cultural connection. Lots of similarities between Aboriginal cultures and the idea of ancient or traditional stories and how they can be relevant in our modern lives. By the way - I picked this book up out of sheer curiosity and had never heard about it before - so glad I did.

[Katy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Haunting and surreal.

[Yalonda · Rating 1 out of 5]

I just didn't enjoy this as much as I thought I would. While the premise was enticing, I was constantly confused and felt overwhelmed. While there were moments of true inspiration, reading this was a constant struggle. I admire the world created but I never felt I got a grasp on the author's vision or voice so I never bonded with any characters. There were ah-ha moments but not in a good way; more like frustrated "that would have been nice to know earlier; it explains a lot" moments. I feel so bad about the single star review but I simply did not like this book. While Sedia has numerous well-received books to her credit, I have no interested in any of them. "Pushing the boundaries of fantasy writing" might be reasonable if you are looking for main characters who are not male, straight, Caucasian, or traditional American. Perhaps the only part of this book I truly enjoyed was the African heritage link - truly fascinating - and I will be interested in future readings with a similar link.

[Zefyr · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Just understand one thing for me, all right? It's not your fault, but sometimes we have to do what we can to correct wrongs done by other people. Sometimes those who committed them are dead or they don't care or they don't see it as a wrong. But this is what makes us human, this -- the fact that we are able to fix other people's mess. Even when it's not fair." (p 258)

I'm so mixed on this one. It's definitely not as good as the stunning Secret History of Moscow; it feels always at a slight distance, like Sedia was struggling to find the characters' voices. But it's also wonderfully dreamy and ghostlike, bringing folklore to life and life into folklore, and sometimes wove these things together into this cutting magical reality that brought the book to life. The navigation of such different experiences of family and solitude as experienced by Vimbai and Maya, and their resulting experiences in navigating their history and ancestry, was staggering.

[Beka · Rating 2 out of 5]

I can't say I loved this one, although I generally enjoy Ekaterina Sedia's books. I just didn't feel like any of the characters became real people, which made it hard to dive into their challenges or connect with their emotional struggles. Every time I started to feel like I was slipping into the story, another bizarre thing would happen, often without much set-up, that threw me out again. I liked the themes of finding oneself through an exploration of one's past (history and personal choices), I liked the idea of the main character's feeling of disconnection becoming a tangible challenge, and I liked the lens of experiencing this through the perspective of both immigrants and people born Americans. I loved the use of Zimbabwean (and other African) folklore. But nothing felt sufficiently real or sufficiently dreamlike to ultimately make an enjoyable story.

[Bukcrz · Rating 1 out of 5]

This is more of a note or warning to myself than a review.
The main character is that generic character in a horror movie whom you/the viewer are shouting at not to go there or don't do something because it will make things worse. This young adult girl does 'mistakes' that will be be paid by other character's suffering or permanent loss or changed. Most of the time I am wishing she will just die.
There are also commentaries about colonialism and its effects to its victims scattered throughout the book.
In the end she is supposed to gain wisdom after the people around her are harmed and permanently different by her own willful actions.
I read a reviewer said this book left him/her cold and I agree. I will not be reading anymore book from this author.

[j · Rating 2 out of 5]

Sedia's prose bored me, and -- while I found some of the imagery somewhat fun -- the last third of the novel (in particular) becomes incredibly repetitive. The narrative framework winds up spreading itself exhaustingly thin. While the surrealistic angle of the fantasy is welcome, the emotional worlds of the characters are hardly as free-flowing or imaginative. Throughout the details of African culture and immigrant experience are flimsy and vague, so the characterization and theming totally lacks an actual intimacy of detail that would bolster the emotional beats Sedia is trying to hit.

[Robbie · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is an excellent surrealist story about the child of immigrants coming to terms with her own feelings about herself and the cultural heritage that she felt forced upon her through a magical world born out of a house with very cheap rent and some very odd occupants. It was a delight to read and it reinforced my decision never to have a ground line again now that I know how they can trap psychic energy babies.

[Kris · Rating 4 out of 5]

A great piece of surreal dreamy magical realism.

[Shiela · Rating 2 out of 5]

Different. A little too stream- of- conscious.

[Patricia · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wonderful story

[Erica · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5 stars rounded up to 4.

[Victor Vilchiz · Rating 3 out of 5]

not what i expected of a book highly recommended.

[Young]

The house of discarded dream feels like one blown up acid trip with a well thought out plot. It's as if the questionable drug you took somehow made sense, and at the same time educating you on some fundamentals of cultural/social theory. I had a funny experience reading this book because I started out reading, and I was feeling like this book had no imagination, and it was just some cut and dry storytelling. The fantasy world somehow crept into the real world without my tacit realization. The real fantasy began probably when they found themselves floating amidst the sea in a house, but I was reading it like this shit can realistically happen in real life. I only came to be aware of the fantasy world when she was talking about the psychic baby in the telephone, and Felix pulled it out with his hair. This event made me put down the book, and do some profound self-analyzing because I was like how did I not know we were in fantasy land before this...

The social context of the story is what kept the reality from going full mode tripping balls kind of thing. Vimbai's relationship with her mother was one that struck both an intellectual and personal note with me. Her mother was a professor on Africana studies, and she constantly tried to apply the theoretical to the actual in Vimbai's life. Any theorist knows after a long time of trying to apply the abstract to the real world, they are setting themselves up for failure (Ask Marx). Theory rarely if ever falls along in line with the mechanics of the world. Vimbai's mother nonetheless tries, and fails miserably because Vimbai grows up somewhat westernize and in a sense rebellious to her elucidating mother. Her mom had the best of intentions, but intent fails often.

I was confused as to how I should read this book because I've never actually read a book like it. A book that was a mix of reality and fantasy. Genres usually don't blend as hard and had clear distinct lines. I would never have a problem reading a Harry Potter or Lord of the Rings book like I do going through this book. Novels like this have one thing I despise the most, and that is the insane amount of metaphors. It was like reading an orgiastic mythology story, and within the mythology lies (no surprise) MORE mythology. It made the book too dense to finish, and I realized that I should enjoy the acid trip rather than overthink it. We can overthink any book, but this book was asking or rather badgering for some thought, and I hated it for that reason. Ekaterina couldn't let me just appreciate the book, she had to made me think.

[Anna · Rating 5 out of 5]

Amazing, absolutely amazing! I loved this book -- full of fantastically fantastical goings on, as Ekaterina Sedia is so good at. I also loved that the main character, Vimbai, is studying marine biology and loves horseshoe crabs. She's also the daughter of Zimbabwean parents, migrating to New Jersey when she was little. She has battled her whole life with her identity as an American, Zimbabwean, black-but not black enough for her American peers, African-but not African enough for her Africana Studies professor-mother. She moves out of her parents' house to a house on the Jersey dunes, with two other people -- Maya and Felix. Strange things start happening, such as the ghost of Vimbai's African grandmother showing up, Felix extracts a "psychic energy baby" from the phone lines and his hair is more apparently a kind of wavy black hole atop his head, and their house floats onto the ocean and begins changing into their dreams and imaginations on the inside. Vimbai remembers African tales from childhood that her grandmother told her and her Kenyan babysitter told her, and these start appearing in the house (like the catfish "man-fish" who is huge, long-lived, and an eater of souls). She also evaluates her sexuality and her strong love for a girl in 8th grade, with whom she never really talked to much, just admired from afar, and considers her feelings for Maya in her new home. Maya deals with her grandmother's death, leaving her alone in the world, while Vimbai realizes she has more in common with her mother and father than she thought -- she's been trying so hard to deny the African within her, and her heritage, irritated with how much her mother criticizes America and gets angry about assumptions people make about Africans; she's also enraged that a white man is head of the Africana Studies department at the university where she works. The writing was gorgeous, full of luscious descriptions, and there were so many layers to the story that I almost want to read it again right now!

[Kristine · Rating 3 out of 5]

I picked this up because it was recommended on Writing Excuses as a good example of writing, "the other," where the other is a person of a different racial/ethnic background. The author does very successfully write a second generation black woman. While I haven't known any second generation black people, I have had quite a few second generation friends of other ethnicities and I really felt like I was reading about them, about the way they were torn by two different, often opposing cultures, having to choose between looking back to their traditional "homeland" or abandon tradition in favor of (white) American culture. I thought she handled that tension really well (which may not be saying much given how many generations back my ancestors came here).

I had a hard time getting into the story, though. The plot meanders through the rooms of the ever-expanding house, continually finding random additions that don't necessarily fit logically. While it's an interesting ride, it was hard for me to really engage. I couldn't predict what was going to happen, in much the way one can't predict what's going to happen in a dream, and that robbed me of my willingness to invest in the story. It was a satisfying enough story I'm glad I finished, and I did grow to love some of the characters, but it's not one that makes me want to go out and read everything by this author.

[Jason · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 stars

Highly imaginative modern adult fairytale. This fantasy of discarded dreams is reminiscent to me to the fairytales of Catherine Valente.

This is my second Ekaterina Sedia novel, Alchemy of Stone was the first, a novel that I really enjoyed. This one is very different and may not be very accessible to the main stream crowd.

This book is a wild, far out, and often extremely strange that will challenge most readers as to wether they can accept this or not. The story itself is really a simple one, a young college student from New Jersey coming to grips and embracing her roots being from Zimbabwe Africa.

The story is told through a surreal adventure that takes our protagonist out to sea and stories straight out of Zimbabwe and African folk lore are combined with weird dream like sequences where our hero is forced to grow.

I will not spoil this read by reciting some of the fantastic imagery that is like a masterpiece painting. I had no problems accepting the layers of the bizarre. The novel works by being short, and concise, more a novella than a novel. It works by not trying to provide realistic explanations.

This is an acid tripped fairytale about a young woman accepting her heritage.

[Lucas · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read little fantasy so picking up this one was an interesting experience for me. Especially given the setting and scope of the storyline, as a book of dream made flesh within the coastal world of contemporary New Jersey. Ekaterina Sedia's writing is an incredible mixture of moment-by-moment brilliance and insightful self-awareness. The book does such a fantastic job of fronting an elegant and convincing tale with this interplay between such classical allegories of storytelling and utterly original characters. While some characters are far more fleshed-out then others (haha, disregard that for the uninitiated), such as the protagonist Vimbai, each adds an interesting perspective and unique elements brought to the tale. The writing is at times terribly gripping yet succinct enough to revel in its simplicity. An excellent read and something off the beaten path for I would assume nearly every reader given the unique blend of simulcra meta analysis, fantasy elements, and quite simply solid writing.

[Kit_r_writing · Rating 5 out of 5]

I went looking for this book because I'd heard good things about it, and it did not disappoint. Though the story itself moves at a languid pace, Sedia gets the narrative hooks in early by dropping us into the heroine's head.

When Vimbai, a college student and the daughter of Zimbabwean immigrants, moves out of her parents house and into the house on the dunes, she finds herself seduced both by the dreamy quality of life in the house and by the inexplicable happenings that take place inside; the house collects ghosts and other phenomena. As she becomes unmoored from her ordinary life, so does the house become unmoored from its foundations.

Though at first life in the floating house is pleasant, Vimbai and her roommates eventually realize that they need to get home. And it's up to Vimbai to figure out how.

The House of Discarded Dreams is like a dream itself; surreal and seductive, beautiful and haunting. When the story ended, I was a bit disappointed that I had to wake up from it.

[Sonia · Rating 4 out of 5]

I do consider myself to be a highly practical person. Perhaps this is why I find fantasy writing to be unsettling. I've encountered some fantasy in my reading, however, that - while still unsettling and cosmically upending - I've quite enjoyed. These tend to be the grittier and darker fantasy tales I've encountered over the years.

The House of Discarded Dreams is fantastic, lulling, dreamy, and fantastically written. I loved it for all of these same elements. I didn't feel so much as if I were reading a book, but rather, taking a journey, on a floating wooden beachhouse. It was a tremendous experience.

Sedia writes in a way that compliments the subject of her tale. The slow, patient winding of details. The wise, calm movement of words parallels the wise and calm unraveling of plot.

A beautiful book.

[Kelly Flanagan · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a fun book to read. Intriguing, fresh and full of truth. A book I think anyone can get something out of. As well as liking the story for itself, I was appreciative of some of the points made in the book. Points about respect and culture that many miss. A lot of he points are about race and culture and I felt the book explores the boundary between generations as well as many misconceptions about people who have made the move from one country to another for any reason.
After reading that you'd think this was a heavy book hard to read etc. I was so pleased to read a lighthearted story about dreams we leave behind and how they change our worlds.
This is another book I would happily recommend to all readers. I don't see anything that would put people off , genre wise or other ways. just a great book.