(Book Review)

I was struggling to finish this novel so much!

This magical realistic novel is strange. It is weird, it is terrifying, it is surprising and scary but, at the same time, you want to keep reading it. I don’t think I get the story but, at the same time, I knew what it is about.

A strange mix of real and mystic worlds. Not sure who would love it. This is not a book for any Tom, Dick and Harry. I wanted to quit it many times. But then I took it back in my hands to find out what would happen next to all the characters. It took me a while to read it (732 pages, it`s quite a lot). I have mixed feelings and billions of questions because I could not compare it to other novels even if I start banging my head against the wall.

At the end, I am just confused and can’t wrap my head around what I just read.

And the description sounded so promising…

Description, “The Gray House is enigmatic and fantastical, comic and postmodern…Rowling meets Rushdie via Tartt… Nothing short of life-changing”. —The Guardian

The Gray House is an astounding tale of how what others understand as liabilities can be leveraged into strengths.

Bound to wheelchairs and dependent on prosthetic limbs, the physically disabled students living in the House are overlooked by the Outsides. Not that it matters to anyone living in the House, a hulking old structure that its residents know is alive. From the corridors and crawl spaces to the classrooms and dorms, the House is full of tribes, tinctures, scared teachers, and laws—all seen and understood through a prismatic array of teenagers’ eyes.

But student deaths and mounting pressure from the Outsides put the time-defying order of the House in danger. As the tribe leaders struggle to maintain power, they defer to the awesome power of the House, attempting to make it through days and nights that pass in ways that clocks and watches cannot record.