Reviews
"Beginning with a straightforward, realistic style, Ms. Petrosyan slowly and carefully leads the reader step by step through suspension of belief to the House's inner workings, which manifest in increasingly fluid sentences and offbeat vocabulary...its intended audience will savor each page and flip right back to the beginning after finishing. Hats off, then, to Mariam Petrosyan for a surreal ride through an unconventional universe." -- Pittsburgh Post-Gazette "Rich with startling details and vivid world building...the intellectually and emotionally rewarding conclusion confirms this fantasy novel's undeniable power" -- Publishers Weekly "Petrosyan's prose is wildly imaginative and beautifully wrought, overflowing in Machkasov's translation with rich sensory details that combine with an offbeat sense of humor to form a fully realized world. This dense, heady tale should be enjoyed by seasoned readers of literary fiction and magical realism...An impressive--and impressively massive--feat of imagination and translation." -- Kirkus Reviews " The Gray House is enigmatic and fantastical, comic and postmodern, flawed but brilliant, with elements of multiple genres--Rowling meets Rushdie via Tartt...To its most ardent fans, a spell in Petrosyan's mysterious house is nothing short of life-changing." -- The Guardian "Yuri Machkasov's translation is a Herculean feat....Machkasov has captured the novel's poetic richness." -- The Guardian
Synopsis
" 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. A Read Russia Prize Finalist., "A tale of how what others understand as liabilities can be leveraged into strengths."--Provided by publisher., " 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.
