Salt Houses

De: Hala Alyan

Narrado por: Leila Buck

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.

© 2017 Hala Alyan (P)2017 Recorded Books

Meandering

I was disappointed in the end. I had different expectations for this book and was looking for more substance. The story was somewhat interesting but meandering and became stale with vague references and loose ends. Just when a character was becoming interesting the focus changes to another in an abrupt transition of time and place. Epilogue was strange and unnecessary not really adding insight or closure just left me thinking why add this?
Narration was very good- otherwise I wouldn’t have finished listening.

Must read

Beautifully told story that will move you with its humanity and the poetry of its prose.

Narration was fantastic

I love the varying perspectives of the same events through generations and cultures. I think I preferred it in audio because the narration brought such life to the characters

Story of a Palestinian Family

It is a beautiful story about a displaced Palestinian family, where we see the different perspectives of the family members as we learn their stories and their relationships with the rest of the family. Great narration.

Multigenerational story of a Palestinian family

This book was fantastic. Each character in the story was complex and their lives complex too- a beautiful family with an immense draw back home.

Bittersweet read

Speaks the story of every displaced Palestinian. Hala grasped the nostalgia, hope, pain and relentless dream of returning to Palestine in Alya's lifetime. I enjoyed listening to it a lot.

Love and loss in the diaspora

A tragically beautiful story about a Palestinian family through the generations and how the diaspora has affected their lives with each generation

heartbreaking tale of so many generations

I felt like I was reading my grandparents life story. Such a beautiful of the trauma of colonialism and the generational implications of becoming a refugee, losing your identity, and struggling to find home.

Beautiful story

I enjoyed the story telling. The way the author weaved together the generations as the story progressed was really touching.

Potentially great

This had the potential to be a great story but fell flat in some aspects. Would have liked more character development and more of an examination about what it really means to be Palestinian. There were references to specific historical events but the references did not connect very strongly to the characters. They seemed more like background music than lasting impressions on the characters.