Our Cut of Salt by Deena Helm
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Our Cut of Salt is one of those novels where I feel like I shouldn’t even be reviewing it. Who am I to provide my opinion on what is clearly a passion project for an author with more knowledge on this subject than I could ever have?
Then I remind myself that I’m not judging anything, all I’m doing is providing my opinion based on my personal reading experience. I’m not a critical reader. I’m not really ever evaluating the merits of a story, I’m just relaying the experience I had with it to y’all, so you can decide for yourself if you would like to read it or not.
I’m only mentioning this, because when I got to the end of this book, it was really hard for me to come up with a star rating. It was almost like when you read someone’s memoir, like how do you ‘rate’ someone else’s life story.
I know this is a fictional account, but it’s based in a difficult reality. Would I recommend you read it? Yeah, I absolutely would. It’s excellent.
A heart-wrenching, beautifully-told story of generational trauma, identity and place. Though quite Literary, which isn’t a go-to subgenre within Horror for me, I am so glad that I stepped outside my comfort zone and read it.
I was so impressed with the way Helm told this story. The structure really pulled me in. We’re following Marina, a Palestinian-American woman, who returns to Palestine to visit her recently deceased Grandmother’s childhood home. Her Grandmother, Nuhad, left Haifa in 1948 after the Nakba, but always kept the city in her heart.
Marina’s Mom, Haifa, named for the city that her own mother lost, also plays a prominent role in the story. We get all three women’s perspectives in a story that spans generations and helps to show the repercussions and length of war, occupation and resulting generational traumas.
The audiobook, narrated by Victoria Nassif, helped to bring this difficult story even more to life for me. I was swept up in Nassif’s narration and absolutely flew through this. I highly recommend that format if you can get it.
Another aspect of this that I really appreciated is that there is a place that becomes a character unto itself. I love when that happens. You don’t see it very often, but when it’s done, and done well, I think it can be so impactful.
An example would be Tiffany McDaniel’s On the Savage Side, where a local river is given a perspective on the tragedies happening within a town. I always love a true sense of place in a story and the way this is done is great. The history and feeling, the desperation. It’s so well done.
As someone who believes history can be held in the lands around us, the good and the bad, the feelings and traumas that may have occurred on the grounds we walk on, I don’t feel like that ever really goes away. You can feel it if you’ve ever been to certain places with a deep or dark history. I love when an author brings that idea to their stories like this.
As a haunted house story, this is absolutely unique and a truly powerful story. While not something I would typically gravitate towards, it did read a bit Literary for my tastes, I still walked away awed and impressed.
Helm should be so proud of this story. I think it’s going to deeply impact a lot of Readers.
Thank you so much to the publisher, Tor Nightfire and Macmillan Audio, for providing me with copies to read and review. I’m excited to read more from Helm in the future. This was a very well written story.