A Room Away from the Wolves by Nova Ren Suma

Rating: ⭐⭐⭐

“Maybe you thought you knew something you don’t. Something you can’t know yet. Because you’re not supposed to.”

Nova Ren Suma’s A Room Away from the Wolves can be summed up entirely by this quote, for both the protagonist and the reader. Categorized as magical realism, the story opens with a girl jumping from the roof of a building only to get up from the cracked concrete and walk away unharmed. Strange things continue to happen as the story goes on, such as photographs that move of their own accord, the mandatory curfew and what happens if its missed, and the strange door Bina’s room with a staircase leading to nowhere. 

Main character Sabina, or Bina for short, simultaneously both runs away and is expunged from her home. She seeks out Catherine House, a boarding house for girls, where her mother sought refuge as a young woman. This is really the clearest part of the story, Bina’s need for independence and fondness for her mother. She’s constantly told she won’t know things until she’s ready, excluded from social circles of the other girls in the house, and seems to be in a perpetual state of confusion. Unfortunately, this is also how the reader feels for most of the novel. The story poses more questions than answers even upon reaching the unsatisfactory ending. 

For those who’ve read Suma’s superbly written The Walls Around Us, they’ll likely recognize the same kinds of patterns emerge and have an inkling of what’s not being revealed, or rather implied, until the close of the story. That is where the similarities end though. A Room Away from the Wolves offers a poetic writing style for readers intrigued by a book’s language, but apart from that, readers end the story feeling like they’re in a room away from clarity.