Remember back in January
when I said I was throwing my reading goals out the window so I could read Among Others, a book I hadn't heard of until it released but immediately knew I had to read?
Man oh man, am I glad I did. This, after all, is why I don't believe in strict to-be-read piles, lists, or limits. There are just too many books out there that I don't yet know about. How could I possibly limit myself to a list?
Among Others, despite its somewhat cliché cover design, is a an unusual and compelling of a young girl struggling to find her place in the world after the death of her twin and separation from her mother. Through her diary entries, we are entered into Morwenna Phelps' world: a world of twins and half-existence, fairies, estranged family member. Morwenna is different, but like any teenage girl, she is trying desperately to figure out where she belongs, what she will grow up to be, and who she is.
Many of the themes here are familiar: a twin fighting for a sense of identity and independence; the child of divorced parents examining a past relationship; an orphan looking for a family; a schoolgirl looking for friends; a cripple seeking acceptance. But told all together in a world in which fairies influence events, magic can be seen and understood by those willing to look for it, and books provide a powerful force in shaping young adults' lives, Jo Walton's novel is nothing familiar.
On reading the first pages, I was disappointed to find I had signed up for 250+ pages of journal entries. Again? We've done the teenage-girl-diary before; Anne Frank cornered that market. But Walton pulls it off, moving things along nicely enough but peppering entries with those standard high-school concerns: cheating, boys, grades, holidays, and status.
Despite an occasionally slow pace, the insight we get into Mor's thinking is worth waiting around for. Her world revolves around the fairies, making sense of what happened to her sister, and the science fiction books she devours by the week.
Magical forces are laced through every experience she has. But this is not a world of fairy-godmother figures and wands and spellcasting. This magic is of an earthy sort, with fairies that may or may not speak any intelligible language and spells that are innately tied to the earth and the inherent magic of place and the connections we have with things, places, people:
"It wasn't that we didn't know history... It just didn't connect to the landscape. And it was the landscape that formed us, that made us who we were as we grew in it, that affected everything. We thought we were living in a fantasy landscape when actually we were living in a science fictional one. In ignorance, we played our way through what the elves and giants had left us, taking the fairies' possession for ownership." (p. 34)
It is a magic of coincidence, of setting things in motion, of preventing one small event that will change the outcome years down the road:
"It's like if you snapped your fingers and produced a rose but it was because someone on an aeroplane had dropped a rose just at the right time for it to land in your hand. There was a real person and a real aeroplane and a real rose, but that doesn't mean you have the reason you have the rose in your hand isn't because you did the magic." (p. 40)
See? It's no
expelliarmus or
expecto patronum or anything with wands and wizard hats and spells and wards. But it is still magic, and despite the fact that it is a crucial factor in shaping Mor's self - it is published by Tor, after all - Mor's existence is perhaps even more dominated by her reading. She discoveries books and libraries and reading and the escape that they provide in the way that we all wish we could revisit for the first time:
"Interlibrary loans are a wonder of the world and a glory of civilization. Libraries really are wonderful. They're better than bookshops, even. I mean bookshops make a profit on selling you books, but libraries just sit there lending you books quietly out of the goodness of their hearts." (p. 59)
"They could take all the money from building enough nukes to kill all the Russians in the world and give it to the libraries. What good does an independent nuclear deterrent do Britain, compared to the good of libraries? Somebody has their priorities wrong." (P. 246)
Don't you want to rediscover the wonder that is the library, a home for books to be shared?
Bottom line: Mor's story starts out with the end; like Tolkien, her idol, she understands "the things that happen after the end" (p. 60), and her end is the death of her twin. But slowly, through new relationships, books, and yes, magic, Mor comes to understand that this is just
an end, not
the end. She matures, her reading matures, and her writing matures, culminating in a satisfying conclusion that still manages to leave much to the imagination.
Among Others is a must-read for anyone who has ever been touched by the magic they read about in books, or ever felt that there is something more to this existence than meets the eye. This coming-of-age story takes a step back from the standard high school experience, deftly blending science fiction and the very real experiences of high school (friends, family, money, grades, and dating) in a book that is sure to carry you along in its currents. Not to mention the list of books merely mentioned will triple your reading list in the few short days it will take you to finish it.
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More from Jo Walton:
Farthing (Tor, 2006)
Ha' Penny (Tor, 2008)
The King's Peace (Tor Fantasy, 2002)
The King's Name (Tor Fantasy, 2001)
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Thoughts from other bookworms:
Stainless Steel DroppingsThings Mean A LotFantasy & SciFi Lovin News & Reviewsio9 - Loving books and doing magic might just get you through puberty---
Many thanks to my husband for providing my copy of this book.
Holy Suessicals! According to an article in yesterday's PW, Random House has just announced the release of a "new" Dr. Seuss collection. It's not really fair to call it new, as the stories in The Bippolo Seed and Other Lost Stories were originally published in magazines in the 1950s, but they are stories sure to be new to many Suess fans.
You know the kind of book you resist reading, just because everyone else has been talking about it for so long that you're convinced you know everything there is to know about it? It's the way some people feel about the movie Casablanca, or the show Friends. Saw the preview, heard people rave about it, what's left to know? Yeah, that's how I felt about The Help.
Elena Mauli Shapiro, born and raised in Paris, has written a novel with a wonderfully colorfully Parisian setting. When American academic Trevor Stratton arrives in Paris, he finds a small, checkered plastic box tucked away in the back of a filing cabinet in his new office. Bewitched by both his clerk and the artifacts he finds within the box, he follows the life and story of Louise Brunet, recreating her story through the collection of items she's left behind - a white lace glove, a postcard, a datebook, a letter.
was just thinking. my sister does -alot- of reading, and spends like
In her most recent book, Unfamiliar Fishes (on sale tomorrow), Sarah Vowell turns her witty attention to the annexation of Hawaii, where, as the back of the book claims, "Manifest Destiny got a sunburn." This back-of-the-book blurb, unlike so many others, sets the stage - and the tone - of Vowell's latest offering perfectly. I'd never have said so before, but the annexation of Hawaii was American Manifest Destiny at its best (or worst, depending on your point of view). And Vowell's account of this history is at once timely, poignant, and humorous. An interesting combination, thinks you? You think right.
I've been a long-time follower of the blog Contrariwise, which posts regular updates of reader-submitted literary tattoos. From illustrations to quotes to punctuation marks, bookworms seem as fond of ink on bodies as they are of ink on the page. Yours truly is no exception; I've been planning for years how to fit in another tattoo, this one a literary quote. 
Nancy Pearl has a rule of 50: if you are fifty pages into a book and do not love it, close it and move on. She's right, really. There are too many books in the world to spend hours on something that isn't just right for you. You know, after all, that something out there is. 
Whoooooaaaa Nellies. This week was starting to look a little glum - and it's only Monday - and then this link landed in my inbox, courtesy of the never-disappointing Shelf Awareness. HBO has released another trailer for the new HBO mini-series, Game of Thrones, set to premiere April 17. Plus, there's a sneak peek scheduled for April 3. Too bad I don't have HBO... yet. I'd embed the video for you, but I can't. So go to the EW Inside TV page to watch. It's worth it.
