Among Others by Jo Walton
It has been a while since I reviewed a book and I am so procrastinating on writing my thesis but still this book totally deserves the attention.
Among Others is really a book about what it is like to be a reader, or more to the point a reading kid or teenager. How there is no such thing as reading too much. How the whole world is turned off and everything else is suddenly less important than the next page, even basic bodily needs or outright pain. That magic moment of connection when you suddenly meet someone, who has read the same books as you have, especially before we had the luxury of the internet.
The book is set in 1979 and is the diary of Morwenna, a fifteen year old girl who's mother is a sort of evil witch. She and her twin sister twarted her plan to become an evil overlady, but her sister died and she got badly injured. She fled to her absent father, who shipped Morwenna off to a boarding school right away. That's the point where the book starts, after the world threatening plan has already been botched and Morwenna has to get on with her life with a handycap, annoying schoolmates and occasional evil letters from her mother.
She retreats into books and reads all sorts of Scifi classics with the fanaticism you only have as a kid. The wonderful thing about the book is, that if you've read some scifi yourself it takes you on a journey through all those books and the ideas they propose and the things you can take home from them.
I came a bit late to the party, starting in the 1990ties, but my sister and her friends introduced me to a lot of the books mentioned in Among Others and they made life worth living at the time. This book reflects that feeling perfectly.
I also like the way magic is treated in the book. Like magic is in childhood games, where the line between fantasy an neurosis is blurry. The magic she describes is very hard to verify and her whole description of the events might be a fantastic abstraction, or not. That's what makes the book so interesting.
I will absolutely have to read more books by Jo Walton, does anyone have recommendations?
Among Others is really a book about what it is like to be a reader, or more to the point a reading kid or teenager. How there is no such thing as reading too much. How the whole world is turned off and everything else is suddenly less important than the next page, even basic bodily needs or outright pain. That magic moment of connection when you suddenly meet someone, who has read the same books as you have, especially before we had the luxury of the internet.
The book is set in 1979 and is the diary of Morwenna, a fifteen year old girl who's mother is a sort of evil witch. She and her twin sister twarted her plan to become an evil overlady, but her sister died and she got badly injured. She fled to her absent father, who shipped Morwenna off to a boarding school right away. That's the point where the book starts, after the world threatening plan has already been botched and Morwenna has to get on with her life with a handycap, annoying schoolmates and occasional evil letters from her mother.
She retreats into books and reads all sorts of Scifi classics with the fanaticism you only have as a kid. The wonderful thing about the book is, that if you've read some scifi yourself it takes you on a journey through all those books and the ideas they propose and the things you can take home from them.
I came a bit late to the party, starting in the 1990ties, but my sister and her friends introduced me to a lot of the books mentioned in Among Others and they made life worth living at the time. This book reflects that feeling perfectly.
I also like the way magic is treated in the book. Like magic is in childhood games, where the line between fantasy an neurosis is blurry. The magic she describes is very hard to verify and her whole description of the events might be a fantastic abstraction, or not. That's what makes the book so interesting.
I will absolutely have to read more books by Jo Walton, does anyone have recommendations?