By turns brilliant, erotic and piercing, this third novel from PEN/Faulkner award-winner Azareen Van der Vliet Oloomi shines new light into how historical oppression, both at a personal and societal level, continues to dominate our present-day thinking. Ostensibly a dissection of an exploitative relationship, the novel quickly broadens into a wide-ranging examination—and skewering—of master narratives around race, gender, sexuality and religion which dictate the way we live now ... Van der Vliet Oloomi reflects the co-existence of pain and pleasure in lush descriptions of the southern Spanish landscape which simultaneously evoke its post-Reconquista history of Jewish and Muslim suppression.

... what Savage Tongues lacks is the kind of historical specificity Lessing's stories were anchored in—it's the sort of book that uses the word 'history' almost every other page, but the histories in question feel overly-broad, and the polemic is more a string of slogans ... It's a strange, hand-waving approach to history. On the one hand it's clear that Oloomi is referring to the history of colonialism and the West's imperial warfare in the lands her characters hail from ... Savage Tongues undercuts its exploration of Arezu's wrenching past by blunting her understanding of the world. There is little consonance in how Oloomi deals with 'history' and Arezu's assault together; the details of her relationship with Omar are complicated and continually questioned, but always with a juxtaposition to histories too oversimplified to support the weight of the comparison. The novel is top-heavy with the outlines of a plot to which few new things are added ... It can be moving ... but it suffers from a sense of repetition and a lack of intrigue ... Oloomi's premise itself is fascinating, and her task certainly made difficult by dint of the novel broadly outlining itself so early on. And every so often—like in a riveting polemic about Arezu's relation to whiteness—the book makes a lot out of a little. But mostly it makes a little out of a lot. Such that whenever the rare polemic arrives, one wishes it would stay.

... a novel of ideas if ever there was one ... Though steeped in sex and haunted by fleshy frights (bloody rags under the sink in the grossly grimy apartment; the blue, bloated face of the woman Arezu might’ve become if she’d stayed; the baby wild boar Omar once forced into Arezu’s backpack), their exorcism is mostly a matter of language, happening on the page.

... therein lies one of the weaknesses of the novel: We never fully learn what happened ... The narrative, told from the depths of Arezu’s internal point of view, circles and repeats and inspects the emotional impact of whatever her trauma was. And while this is a realistic response to trauma, it is not a particularly effective way to write a story ... The flashbacks of that summer are sparse and get to be somewhat redundant ... these ideas — interesting as they are — can be didactic without a robust narrative to fold them into ... s at its best a little more than halfway through, when Arezu and Ellie are fully present on the page together. Scenes begin to emerge, character interactions develop ... Some parts of Savage Tongues read like a heady, contemplative essay exploring the nature of personal and historical trauma. Others tell the story of a powerful, essential friendship and how it might help to ease the pain of such trauma. Each of these ways of telling are fine, and in this case, well written. Side by side, though, they can be unbalanced, each coming off a little half-formed. Neither this nor that.

Arezu’s narration captures the complexity of how a mind learns to cope. Fragmented memories surface in each chapter, receding and returning numerous times, coming into sharper focus with each pass. This attention to narrative, executed so diligently, allows the reader to witness a mind carefully excavating buried violence ... Oloomi’s novel examines trauma in a multifaceted way, her characters displaying a layered complexity and their social relationships revealing rich dimensions ... We witness numerous layers of destruction in this novel, whether of a homeland, of safety, even of personal autonomy ... Oloomi’s latest novel arrives at a pivotal crossroads in our cultural history, with the #MeToo movement urging a confrontation with buried sexual traumas, inviting us to look back, to dive deeper, to question forgetfulness and comforting memories. Savage Tongues does all of that and more.

Azareen balances an unerring willingness to explore obsession with an uncanny knack for creating layers and layers of gorgeous and simple physical description ... Azareen Van der Vliet Oloomi is master, capable of the most sophisticated swerve into commentary on the nature of time, of political economies, while in the midst of the sweetest litanizing description—shameless and sculptural in its abundant aptitude for saying what’s there.

... a deeply introspective monologue that will satisfy some, horrify others and leave the rest of us looking from the outside in. If that sounds like a mouthful, it’s because it is. It’s not just that Savage Tongues is a cerebral read ... Largely eschewing plot and other narrative conventions, the story progresses through inner revelations, leaving the reader only brief gasps within a claustrophobic tale ... Those who have lived through abuse will find either solace or torment in the pages of this revealing novel. Others will find understanding—a beginning comprehension of the attempt to voice the excavation of profound pain.

... uneven ... The plot mostly stays put—Arezu swims, the women go out at night, Ellie does a tarot reading—with the narrative focused on Arezu’s inner turmoil. While her self-analysis effectively conveys her anguish and Omar’s manipulation and emotional abuse, the prose is often stilted ... Musings on Middle Eastern politics, including a trip to Israel and occupied Palestine with Ellie, add insight, but in the end, the weighty themes are sunk by portentous delivery. Readers can take a pass.

Van der Vliet Oloomi’s strategy is to forgo plot—and most of the other conventions of fiction—in favor of a book-length monologue. Arezu considers not only her own past, but, more generally, racism, colonialism (her mother is Iranian, her father British), and Israeli-Palestinian politics—Arezu’s Israeli best friend joins her on her trip—among other things. The result can feel oddly claustrophobic, even solipsistic, as Arezu sorts through the seemingly infinite gradations of her feelings. The novel breathes when Arezu manages to step outside herself, to describe her brother, for instance, who was once beaten in a racist attack, or her friend, Ellie, who comes with her to Spain. Arezu’s trauma is real, but there is something self-indulgent about the way she turns the memories over and over in her mind. She seems to savor her own pain in a way that the author doesn’t seem fully aware of. An intense but ultimately claustrophobic book in which a woman can’t get outside her own mind.