I’ve been looking forward to Our Cut of Salt for months now. And I finally got to read it and it was so amazing. It’s a story about history, trauma, and ghosts. This was everything I wanted! Keep reading this book review of Our Cut of Salt for my full thoughts.
Summary
There is something haunting Nuhad’s childhood home in Haifa. Cats avoid its perimeter, strange noises come from within, and residents have mysteriously vanished without a trace. Although Nuhad has not returned to her home since the Nakba in 1948, she always held a place for the house in her heart.
And, in return, the house did the same for her.
After Nuhad passes away, her granddaughter, Marina, is determined to visit her grandmother’s home after a lifetime of being kept in the dark about her culture and family history. Marina’s mother, Haifa – named for the city that was lost to their family – reluctantly agrees to her trip, though she knows firsthand that some secrets are better left buried.
But the house is no longer a home. It is a painful, festering wound that infects everything it touches. The more Marina digs into her family’s past, the sicker she becomes. Despite Nuhad’s ghostly warnings, Haifa rushes to help her daughter.
As the three women converge in their ancestral home, they must put the haunting to rest before the secrets of the past drown them all.
Review
(Disclaimer: I received this book from the publisher. This has not impacted my review which is unbiased and honest.)
Our Cut of Salt witnesses the trauma of the past, the history, the theft, the murder. And proves that it’s not in the past, that these crimes are being perpetuated today and over and over and over again in our memories, our stolen homes, and our ghosts. Our Cut of Salt is a horror story in two respects – this haunted house and the horrors of the crimes till being committed today. It’s a living thread of horror connecting us to the past which is never buried. Our Cut of Salt uses this idea of rubbing salt in the wound which simultaneously stems the flow of blood, but is this sharp pain to navigate its relationship with the past. This idea of needing to know our history, to communicate with the ghosts and introduce this pain at the same time.
Our Cut of Salt explores these cuts. How they are cut from their history, their heritage, their homes, and their families. Helm asks us how do we create a home, a pale memory with ghosts within, as we continue living – knowing our past was stolen and is threatened with erasure? It takes the idea of the piece we leave behind almost literally, forcing the characters to come to terms with their pain, mistakes, and pleas for forgiveness on silent ears. It’s also a story of mothers and daughters, the ways we try to protect them and how we can feel like we can never measure up. It’s multi-generational to its core in its message of family and the trauma of (re)living, of (re)membering.
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Our Cut of Salt is an emotional tour de force. I was swept away in the horror, the realism and the surreal, and the family strings which carry us forward. It’s everything I was looking for and more. Find Our Cut of Salt on Goodreads, Storygraph, Blackwells, & Libro. fm.