Grief, Belonging and Exile in “The Tilting House” https://southernreviewofbooks.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/the-tilting-house-ivonne-lamazares.png
In The Tilting House, Ivonne Lamazares has crafted a multifaceted coming-of-age story in which a young woman attempts to understand, and possibly forgive, herself, her family, and her country. The writing is lyrical and immersive, drawing readers into the narrator’s complex experience of grief and exile. Through the narrator’s perspective, readers are invited to consider the instabilities that may underlie individual, familial, and national identities, especially in the context of separations and migration, whether chosen or imposed by circumstance.
The novel’s action begins in Havana in the summer of 1993, and although the synopsis describes the book as “spanning three decades,” the bulk of the story takes place in 1993. The narrator, Yuri, is a teenage orphan living with her aunt Ruth. Because of the geopolitical situation, resources are scarce and tensions run high, but Yuri, at least at first, seems like a typical teen, focused on things like how to continue her education. Yuri’s somewhat mundane problems are turned on their head when Mariela arrives, and although Ruth tells Yuri that Mariela is her daughter, Mariela claims to be Yuri’s sister instead.
According to Mariela, Ruth kidnapped her and sent her to the United States as a small child, and now, Mariela says, she wants to stay in Cuba “for good,” creating art and connecting with her home and family. Yuri suspects that Mariela has other motives, though, and learning about Mariela’s background recasts Yuri’s relationship with her own mother and with Ruth. In many pieces of literary fiction, this family dynamic would generate plenty of emotional and psychological tension, but The Tilting House also enlists the material realities of the historical and social context to dramatically raise the stakes.
Throughout the novel, historical and cultural references are clear, but the narration doesn’t dwell on background information. There are times when such elements are explained in the context of articulating something that Mariela doesn’t know because she did not grow up in Cuba. In most cases, though, readers with little background knowledge will be able to pick up important concepts through context clues and follow the narrative without issue.
After Mariela’s seeming lack of local knowledge leads to the death of Ruth’s dog, Lucho, Ruth wants to bury him in the park. At the burial, Mariela draws further attention to the family by setting off homemade rockets — part of an art project — and Ruth is arrested at the scene. Because Yuri is a minor, Mariela is deemed her guardian. Despite her apprehensions about Mariela, rejecting her at this point would make Yuri even more vulnerable, and thus, Yuri cannot easily escape her growing entanglement with her half sister.
With Ruth out of the way, Mariela begins to associate with questionable actors in the neighborhood, including a man named Oscar. Despite warnings from friends and clues she sees with her own eyes, Yuri does not fully realize what is happening until it’s too late, and a scheme to strip valuable materials from Ruth’s house causes the house to collapse. Ignoring Yuri’s objections, Mariela and Oscar leave the house exposed while the sisters travel into the countryside to work on Mariela’s art.
After the trip to the countryside, Yuri seeks help from one of Ruth’s oldest friends, and though Ruth is finally released, the damage is largely done. Ruth is physically and mentally harmed by her imprisonment, and she has no home to return to. Yuri’s boyfriend, Hernando, is arrested. Yuri’s only options are to stay behind and try to make a life for herself in Cuba, or to move to New York with Mariela. She chooses New York. This choice forces Yuri, once again, to reconsider her relationships and family dynamics. While she is not necessarily “forced” to migrate, her options are obviously limited, and she must examine how her choice implicates her in the lives and livelihoods of others.
Choosing to leave weighs heavily on Yuri, and yet, she does not maintain contact, send money, or even write as regularly as Mariela does. Toward the end of the book, a significant time jump takes readers to 2015, when Yuri returns to Havana as a reporter for Reuters. During this trip, she learns just how much Mariela has done for the people left behind, and brief flashbacks fill in some of the intervening time. Yuri’s revised understanding of Mariela adds another layer to the narrative, highlighting the different mechanisms by which exiled people relate to their homelands. Furthermore, it calls into question the national identity of both sisters.
Throughout the novel, the relationship between Yuri and Mariela is complex and nuanced. Lamazares does a brilliant job of capturing Yuri’s ambivalent feelings about her sister. Mariela is never cast as a straightforward “villain,” even when Yuri is suspicious of her. Mariela is alluring. Her creativity and charisma make it possible for her to make a career in art and to move through the world in ways that seem foreign to Yuri, and she does seem committed to Cuba and the people she leaves behind there. Yuri notes that “She was terribly annoying and sweet and charming, like an actual sister, and I had to admit that as uneasy as I often felt around her, I also liked her a great deal.” This duality of emotion pervades the novel, in relation to Mariela and to Cuba more broadly, and thus, The Tilting House presents a powerful family story that also ripples out to depict the ways that families are informed by the sense of belonging they cultivate or lack in the context of exile and immigration.
The Tilting House
By Ivonne Lamazares
Counterpoint Press
Published July 22, 2025
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