Salt Houses

Hala Alyan — 2017

From a dazzling new literary voice, a debut novel about a Palestinian family caught between present and past, between displacement and home On the eve of her daughter Alia's wedding, Salma reads the girl's future in a cup of coffee dregs. She sees an unsettled life for Alia and her children; she also sees travel, and luck. While she chooses to keep her predictions to herself that day, they will all soon come to pass when the family is uprooted in the wake of the Six-Day War of 1967. Salma is forced to leave her home in Nablus; Alia's brother gets pulled into a politically militarized world he can't escape; and Alia and her gentle-spirited husband move to Kuwait City, where they reluctantly build a life with their three children. When Saddam Hussein invades Kuwait in 1990, Alia and her family once again lose their home, their land, and their story as they know it, scattering to Beirut, Paris, Boston, and beyond. Soon Alia's children begin families of their own, once again navigating the burdens (and blessings) of assimilation in foreign cities. Lyrical and heartbreaking, Salt Houses is a remarkable debut novel that challenges and humanizes an age-old conflict we might think we understand--one that asks us to confront that most devastating of all truths: you can't go home again.

Reviews

Sarah Erle@serle

Nov 21, 2022

Beautiful prose, foreign/exotic locale. Plot revolved around a complex multi-generational family. So good.

b.andherbooks@bandherbooks

Oct 9, 2021

Salt Houses follows a Palestinian family through the generations as they live, love, and move throughout the Middle East and the world. The narrative structure is similar to Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi, as each chapter is narrated by a different family member in a different time period, always moving forward in time. What I liked the most was while the characters are obviously impacted by historical events (The Six Days War, 9/11, etc), they are not all major players in these events. Instead we see how these events have impact on "every day people" who are caught up in, for better or worse, living. Readers who enjoy historical fiction and who would like to find empathy and commonality will find a lot to like in Alyan's novel. While we discuss this book for my library's chapter of Book to Art Club, we'll be creating Rorschach ink prints out of various supplies. I wanted to do tea staining, but alas did not have the supplies.

Daryl Houston@dllh

Sep 30, 2021

Just a really nicely done book that navigates generations and cultures and nationalities and national tragedies with what feels like (but surely wasn't) ease. Although the family's experience is vastly different from any of my own experiences, I felt like I was right there with them -- they felt familiar and lovely and awful, as families do -- across all these navigated boundaries. One of my favorite reads of the year so far.