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Summary
Summary
"Shiver-inducingly delicious."-- The New York Times Book Review
"[Suma's] narratives are subtle, quicksilver creatures, her language is elegant, and her characters keep more secrets than they reveal. If this book was a dessert, it wouldn't be a chocolate chip cookie or a vanilla birthday cake -- it would be an earl grey lavender macaroon, or maybe balsamic fig ice cream." - NPR.com
"This beautiful story is full of magical-realism and luscious, lyrical writing." - BuzzFeed
"Terrific . . . A gothic love letter to secret places of New York City and the runaway girls who find them." -- Kelly Link, author of Pulitzer Prize finalist Get in Trouble
"Nova Ren Suma surpasses herself with this gorgeously-told, mesmerizing, tense and twisted story."-- Laura Ruby, National Book Award Finalist and Printz-Winning author of Bone Gap
"Nova Ren Suma is a force to be reckoned with. Nobody writes like her."--Courtney Summers, author of Sadie
" A Room Away From the Wolves is a page-turning thrill. Prepare to be left shivery and spooked and a little bit heartbroken."--Emily X.R. Pan, New York Times bestselling author of The Astonishing Color of After
" A Room Away from the Wolves is a beautifully tangled chain, a modern gothic haunting by one of our masters."--Elana K. Arnold, author of National Book Award finalist What Girls Are Made Of
Bina has never forgotten the time she and her mother ran away from home. Her mother promised they would hitchhike to the city to escape Bina's cruel father and start over. But before they could even leave town, Bina had a new stepfather and two new stepsisters, and a humming sense of betrayal pulling apart the bond with her mother--a bond Bina thought was unbreakable.
Eight years later, after too many lies and with trouble on her heels, Bina finds herself on the side of the road again, the city of her dreams calling for her. She has an old suitcase, a fresh black eye, and a room waiting for her at Catherine House, a young women's residence in Greenwich Village with a tragic history, a vow of confidentiality, and dark, magical secrets. There, Bina is drawn to her enigmatic downstairs neighbor Monet, a girl who is equal parts intriguing and dangerous. As Bina's lease begins to run out, and nightmare and memory get tangled, she will be forced to face the terrible truth of why she's come to Catherine House and what it will cost for her to leave . . .
In A Room Away from the Wolves , critically acclaimed and New York Times bestselling author Nova Ren Suma weaves a spellbinding ghost story about who deserves a second chance, how we lie to those around us and ourselves, and what lengths girls will go to in order to save each other.
Author Notes
Nova Ren Suma is the author of the #1 New York Times bestselling The Walls Around Us , which was an Edgar Award finalist. She also wrote Imaginary Girls and 17 & Gone and is co-creator of FORESHADOW: A Serial YA Anthology . She has an MFA in fiction from Columbia University and teaches at Vermont College of Fine Arts. Originally from the Hudson Valley, she spent most of her adult life in New York City and now lives in Philadelphia.
Reviews (6)
School Library Journal Review
Gr 9 Up-A gorgeously written and evocative ghost tale set in a storied boardinghouse for troubled young women. Seventeen-year-old Sabina Tremper and her mother have always been thick as thieves, embarking on bold adventures, including running away from their first home. However, after Bina gets caught in a series of lies and destructive behavior, their bond becomes strained. When her mother decides to send her away for the summer to ease tensions with her new husband and teenage stepdaughters, Bina feels betrayed. She takes all the cash she can find and steals off into the night. Her plan is to go to New York City and rent a room at Catherine House, just as her mother did the summer before she was born. In this lost-in-time house of secrets, Bina discovers a safe haven to confront her personal demons, some mysterious and powerful talismans from the past, and a kindred spirit whom she can trust. The teen soon realizes that once a young woman takes up residence, she cannot leave Catherine House. Suma is a masterly storyteller, here creating a thoroughly unreliable modern narrator in a deliciously creepy Gothic haunt. VERDICT With much to mull over and discuss, this is a taut and nuanced coming-of-age tale perfect for fans of E. Lockhart's When We Were Liars and Meg Wolitzer's Belzhar.-Luann Toth, School Library Journal © Copyright 2018. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Publisher's Weekly Review
When Sabina "Bina" Tremper, 17, is asked to leave the home she shares with her mother and stepfamily, she knows just what to do: she heads to Catherine House in Manhattan's West Village, the women's residence that her mother once called home for two glorious months. Named for Catherine de Barra, a young woman who leapt to her death from the home's rooftop more than 100 years ago, the home serves as a refuge for young women. But it also seems to bind them to the home through a set of archaic rules and pledges. When Bina befriends her neighbor Monet Mathis, who seems to know more about the strange house than she lets on, Bina begins to piece together her mother's past-and that of Catherine House itself. Suma (The Walls Around Us) poetically spins this riveting tale, part ghost story, part Bildungsroman, which may require a second reading for those not paying close attention as the story unfolds. As Monet says, "If you're supposed to be somewhere, you'll find it. If you're not, you'll walk right by and miss it." Ages 14-up. Agent: Michael Bourret, Dystel, Goderich and Bourret. (Sept.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Horn Book Review
Seventeen-year-old Bina Tremper (a self-confessed liar) has decided to run away. Sick of her mothers distrust and her stepsisters bullying, she heads for Manhattans West Village to stay in the same women-only boardinghouse where her mother had roomed eighteen years earlier. All Bina wants is peace, independence, and maybe a bookstore job. But once she enters Catherine House, she is confronted with ghosts both real and imagined. Catherine de Barra, the houses dead matriarch, appears to watch from her photo on the wall; Bina sees empty rocking chairs rock and smells phantom odors; and all the other young women, except her enigmatic neighbor Monet, seem to have sprung from a different time and place. What is the true nature of Catherine House, and is Bina as safe there as she had hoped to be? Sumas (The Walls Around Us, rev. 3/15) latest gothic chiller contains all the components her fans have come to expect: an unreliable narrator; a haunted space; fraught, complicated female relationships; and a deliciously dark, moody atmosphere delivered in lyrical and evocative prose. Nothing Bina says can be trusted, so readers may occasionally find themselves lost in a muddle of duplicitous foreshadowing and dead-end clues. But those who persist will eventually be rewarded with an eerie reveal that folds gracefully into a sweetly melancholic resolution. jennifer hubert swan (c) Copyright 2018. The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Kirkus Review
A young woman leaves home in search of a refuge where she can reinvent herself but discovers she can't escape the past.Sabina Tremper's mother kicks her out in order to put space between Bina and her volatile stepsisters. The next day, she arrives at Catherine House, a boardinghouse for young women in Manhattan's West Village, where her mother spent a long-ago summer that Bina grew up hearing stories about. Upon arriving, she receives a warning from the mother of a departing boarder: Don't move in. And the questions begin piling up. Why does the house seem to have an unbreakable hold on everyone who inhabits its century-old walls? Why is the landlady so pleased to have all the rooms filled in a particular manner? Who is Bina's new friend Monet Mathis, a reckless girl who hides behind colorful wigs? The house and its occupants have many secrets, but 17-year-old Bina is discouraged from asking questions. The lines separating reality from hallucination and outright lies is thin. Bina is a self-proclaimed chronic liar and a thief, an intersection that results in an unreliable first-person narrator from start to finish. However, her narration is quietly poetic. There's a little diversity among the boarders, although most default to white. Bina is white and Jewish; Monet has light brown skin.So nuanced it requires a second reading. (Suspense. 12-adult) Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Booklist Review
Suma (The Walls around Us?, 2015) drapes her dark, enigmatic novel in a gauzy, supernatural veil, through which readers will observe a runaway teen's search for safety and an understanding of her mother's past. The iron gates of Catherine House promise to protect the young women who board there, whatever dangers they may be escaping. It's where Bina's mother briefly lived before giving birth to her, and after her stepsisters join in beating Bina up at a party, it's where she runs as well. Mystery thrums through the aging walls of Catherine House, where the residents possess secret knowledge that Bina does not. Its founder, Catherine de Barra's, photo seems alive in her frame, and requisite ceremonies and vows further add to the house's mystique. As she tries to unravel Catherine's story, clouds of memory drift through Bina's narrative, offering clues to Bina's history and that of her mother. Suma's surreal writing examines the blurred edges of life, lies, freedom, and mother-daughter relationships, leaving the reader with questions and a tangled sense of wonder.--Julia Smith Copyright 2018 Booklist
New York Review of Books Review
YOUNG ADULT SPECULATIVE FICTION IS a big tent. A Gothic, feminist literary ghost story shares shelf space with a rip-roaring, ripped-from-the-headlines climate change dystopia; an otherworldly, falconry-focused, spectacularly imagined high fantasy novel; and a weird and playful fable about a teenage girl with a tunnel through her belly. You know, something for everybody. NOVA REN SUMAS A ROOM AWAY FROM THE WOLVES (Algonquin, 336 pp., $18.95; ages 14 to is) harks back to Shirley Jackson (a creepy house!), Sir Walter Scott (a cursed opal! strange mist!), and Henry James (another creepy house!). As she did in her best-selling "The Walls Around Us," Suma serves up an unreliable narrator and a haunted residence full of trapped girls. This time, the setting is Catherine House, a boardinghouse for young women, the last of its kind in New York City. We learn that the home opened in 1919 after the mysterious death of its namesake, Catherine de Barra; Bina, 17, knows that long ago, her mother lived there. After a late-night confrontation in the woods with her two stepsisters, Bina finds herself at the side of a country road, unsure of just how she got there, bloody but determined to escape to New York City and Catherine House. "It was almost like I was there already, swaying on new legs in the glittering night that used to know my mother and now might know me," she tells us. Catherine House is haunted in the classic style: surrounded by a black wroughtiron gate and savagely pointed spiked fence, with dark and opaque curtains, a strange caretaker, a musty golden parlor and a portrait of the patroness with eyes that seem to follow Bina. The book's first line gives a sense of what's to come: "When the girl who lived in the room below mine disappeared into the darkness, she gave no warning, she showed no twitch of fear." Leaps and falls and cracks and edges are everywhere in "A Room Away From the Wolves." It's all mist and mood. Some readers will find it frustrating, others shiver-inducingly delicious. there's no mystery to Neal Shusterman and his son Jarrod Shusterman's dry (Simon & Schuster, 400 pp., $18.99; ages 12 and up): It's a propulsive action thriller about our failure to grapple with climate change. Suffused with zombie-movie dread, it's told in the present tense, adding to the feeling of immediacy. In four alternating points of view and quick "snapshots" of strangers in crisis, "Dry" tells the story of the ???-Out: a time in the possibly near future when all the faucets in Southern California run dry. The Central Valley is desiccated - the media have dubbed it "the Pacific Dust Bowl" - and the price of produce has skyrocketed. Arizona and Nevada back out of a "reservoir relief deal," shutting the floodgates on their dams to preserve water for their own populations. And society breaks down. Four very different teenagers - Alyssa, Kelton, Jacqui and Henry - join forces in a desperate search for Kelton's doomsday-prepper family's hidden shelter and bottled water supply. The kids drive through dried-out riverbeds ("really just the memory of a river," Kelton notes); through woods smelling of ever-growing wildfires and littered with vicious survivalists. Alyssa is repeatedly threatened with rape or sexual abuse. The book's only humor comes from Henry, a manipulative little future titan of industry who spouts bizdev jargon yet observes, like the kid he is, "If we don't adhere to the convention of calling shotgun, what rule of law is left to us?" The writing can be clunky ("My God! It happened in the blink of an eye! " and "It may be his turn to go down with the ship" appear on the same page) and character development isn't this novel's strong suit. But the depiction of our collective blindness to the environmental devastation we're wreaking - as well as the irresponsible way mass media cover it - is gripping. NOTHING feels familiar about the setting of Alex London's black wings beating (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 432 pp., $17.99; ages 12 to is). London, author of the underappreciated "Proxy," gives us a brilliantly crafted high fantasy about a society in which survival depends on falconry; even bird haters will be spellbound. There's a lot of world-building right up front, which means it can take a little while for readers to find their wings. It's worth it, though, as we meet Brysen, a young man smitten with his handsome hawk master, and his twin sister, Kylee, who has all the falcon-whispering skills Brysen lacks and desperately craves. Kylee hates her secret ability to speak the ancient language of birds - the Hollow Tongue - and wants only to escape. London conjures up a vivid world in which even the metaphors are bird-focused. Brysen's moods are "like hummingbirds, fleeting and fast"; Kylee's memory of their father's abuse "pinned her in its talons, mantled its wings over her mind." We meet anti-bird-taming religious fanatics who crawl in the dirt, refusing to look at the sky, and "battle boys" who fight for coins ("bronze") in deep pits, wearing feathers and bone bracelets, covered in brilliantly colored tattoos ("they looked like a flock of bloodthirsty parrots"). There are warriors on kites, ice snakes, a blood-birch forest. The vivid story has flashes of "Game of Thrones" and "Mad Max" (the womanpowered remake, not the Mel Gibson original), but "Black Wings Beating" is its own wondrous thing. London has a gift for depicting physicality - brutal fights, delicious food, muscled bodies. The heroes of his epic - there will clearly be a sequel - are a gay boy and a strong girl who needs to accept her own power. "A falcon could mount to the stars and still count the hairs on a goat's head," Kylee muses. "So could a good imagination." Indeed. KENDRA FORTMEYER'S HOLE IN THE MIDDLE (Soho Teen, 360 pp., $18.99; ages 14 and up) IS somehow both conventional and quirky. This first-time novelist (and 2017 Pushcart Prize winner) delivers a body-positive fantasy in which friendship is as important as romance. Morgan Stone was born with a peach-size hole in her abdomen, a tunnel through her entire body. "I look like a bead that's lost its necklace," she says. She lives with her friend Caro, a beautiful plus-size model and activist. (Vamping in a hot dress, Caro demands, "Aren't I punching preconceived notions of fatness equaling lazy, ugly and unlovable in the face?") Morgan comes out as a girl with a toroid center at a club called the Mansion, dancing in a crop top, enjoying her body and getting lost in music. She becomes a local celebrity in Raleigh, N.C., and soon, around the world, thanks to a TMZ-like gossip blog. "Hole Girl" fan fiction and fan art spring up as everyone realizes "we all have holes" - feelings of loneliness, grief, otherness. When Morgan is introduced to Howie, a boy with a protrusion of flesh on his abdomen - her precise opposite ("the puzzle piece pair," the tabloids call them) - genetic engineering offers her a chance to be "normal." But what might that mean? The science makes no sense, and the whole/ hole wordplay and often too-fancy writing ("the trees sheltering the spaces, still in autumn splendor, drop heavily") can be wearying. But Fortmeyer's humor, sweetness and focus on sexual and medical consent are winning. Marjorie ingall is a columnist for Tablet magazine and the author of "Mamaleh Knows Best."