Charlotte Kersten

Year published: 2011

Category: Magical realism

Summary:  Startling, unusual, and yet irresistibly readable, Among Others is at once the compelling story of a young woman struggling to escape a troubled childhood, a brilliant diary of first encounters with the great novels of modern fantasy and science fiction, and a spellbinding tale of escape from ancient enchantment.

Raised by a half-mad mother who dabbled in magic, Morwenna Phelps found refuge in two worlds. As a child growing up in Wales, she and her twin sister played among the spirits who made their homes in industrial ruins, but her mind found freedom and promise in the science fiction novels that were her closest companions. When her mother tries to bend the spirits to dark ends with deadly results, Mori is sent away and must try to come to terms with what has happened without falling prey to the darkness.

My thoughts: This is, at its heart, a book for book lovers. I feel like a lot of books give a sort of performative, annoying lip service to being for “book people,” but that’s definitely not what’s happening here. Walton’s deep knowledge of and passion for speculative fiction truly shines through, and Mori’s obsessive consumption of books is definitely relatable to anyone whose reading has been a lifeline during hard times. I love the way that she relates the ideas presented to her in spec fic to the real world, and I love how clearly this book shows the power of reading, especially the power of reading about different worlds.

I also really love Mori – she is such a bright girl trying to make sense of her world and her suffering, and she has such a wonderfully distinct voice in her diary entries I relate strongly to her sense of alienation from her peers, and I loved seeing her find her karass and other things that she wants to live for. Her decision to live instead of dying to be with her twin sister is written in a beautiful moment, and her last diary entry is also beautiful as she describes all of the things that she is looking forward to doing in her life.

The magical elements are intriguing here, especially the way that Mori struggles with magic’s potential for abuse and the abuse of power in human relationships. She worries a great deal about manipulating human autonomy because of the way that magic has been used to hurt her in the past. One of the book’s most interesting touches is when she becomes convinced that her annoying aunts are witches who are secretly trying to control her by piercing her ears. It’s clear to the reader that the aunts are meddlesome but harmless and that Mori is seeing magic and harm where there are neither of these things because of her mother’s abuse. It could even be argued that all the magical elements of the book are Mori’s imaginative, SFF-loving way of dealing with the hardships she has experienced…but I like to think that the magic is real!

There is one really weird scene where her dad gets drunk and tries to have sex with her – it happens and then is never mentioned again, which leaves me wondering why it was included at all. It just feels like a story beat with fairly heavy implications to be simply introduced and then never addressed later. Otherwise, though, this is a special book with a lot of beauty in it (that I imagine would be even more enjoyable for readers who are more than passingly familiar with all of the books Mori reads; I’ve read Lord of the Rings and some of the Le Guin mentioned her, and the dig at Stephen Donaldson was hilarious, but otherwise I felt terribly uncultured!).